‘It‘s a Good Day’

A Reason To Smile

Credit: Getty Images

If you’ve never heard of Peggy Lee, the best way I can describe her is that she was the Taylor Swift of my time. In that, like Swift, she was a superstar singer-songwriter of popular music. The Grammy winner wrote more than 270 songs, including many chart-toppers, like 1946’s “It’s a Good Day.”

This video version of the song features clips of her first husband and co-writer, Dave Barbour, and their daughter, Nicki. 

Peggy Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in North Dakota in 1920. At 17, she moved to Hollywood, changed her name, and became a star. She sang and acted professionally for the next seven decades. Lee sang with some of the biggest male stars of the era: Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Anyone who was anyone recorded her songs: Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland, to name but a few.

Maybe one of your parents, or a grandparent, sang “It’s a Good Day” to you when you were a child. It’s a song you’ll find yourself humming long after you’ve heard it. Living through times such as these, I find songs like this can quickly turn a gray day into a sunny one. I hope you enjoy one of my all-time favorites and a reason to smile, “It’s a Good Day.”

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