This song was first recorded under the "I Be's Troubled" title, in 1941 with acoustic guitar for the Library Of Congress. When Lomax met him, Muddy was poor but owned a few records, including ones by the bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw and the jazzman Jay McShann (whose band included the bebopper Charlie Parker), he said he considered Fats Waller his favorite radio star, and he was playing in a fiddle band: waltzes, blues, and whatever else dancers at the gigs wanted. He told Library of Congress researchers that the tunes he knew included "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," "I Ain't Got Nobody," "Dinah," "Deep In The Heart Of Texas," "Darktown Strutters' Ball," and "Red Sails In The Sunset." He said the first song he had learned to play on the guitar was Leroy Carr's "How Long How Long Blues." "I Be Bound To Write To You" is another recorded acoustic version of "I Be's Troubled" from before Aristocrat.

Muddy got his first electric guitar, a gift from an uncle, in about 1945. Lomax wrote in 1942 that Muddy had written "I Be's Troubled" while fixing a tire, but he was apparently being sloppy, Muddy having actually told him that he wrote "Country Blues" in 1938 while fixing a tire, and wrote "I Be's Troubled" while walking down a road.