In Right, Out Right: A Song History
“In Right, Out Right” is the opening of a children’s chorus that hymnals usually title “Happy All the Time.”[1] Hymnary.org lists its words as anonymous,[1] and the tune is filed under its opening line rather than under a named tune.[2]
Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Children playing "à Capelletto", etching, 1705–15. Children at play, shown for the subject; it has no connection to the chorus.
The earliest printing in the hymnary.org index is Singspiration Two of 1942, where the chorus appears with a harmonization by Robert Savage.[2][3] Two years later it turned up in Action, a 1944 collection of gospel songs and choruses gathered for boys and girls, in an arrangement signed H. D. L.[4] In 1952 the Sabbath School Department of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists placed it in Happy Songs for Boys and Girls, arranged by Mrs. Henry Grube.[5] The hymnals indexed there credit the music to several different people, so the composer is uncertain and cannot be named from the sources consulted here.[2] Hymnary.org also records it in Songs of Praise for Little Ones in 1988 and I’m Gonna Sing in 2003.[1]
Mike Anderson includes it in Sunday Songs For Kids, a Fingers Of Steel book of Christian children’s songs in standard notation, with chords for dulcimer, guitar, banjo or any other chording instrument.[6]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "Happy All the Time" (text).
- Hymnary.org: "I'm inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time" (tune).
- Hymnary.org: "Singspiration Two, #109".
- Hymnary.org: "Action, #70".
- Hymnary.org: "Happy Songs for Boys and Girls, #88".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Mike Anderson, Sunday Songs For Kids".
- Image: Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Children playing "à Capelletto", etching, 1705–15. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.