“A Beautiful Life” was written, words and music, by William M. Golden in 1918. It is often known by its first line, “Each Day I’ll Do a Golden Deed.” Golden was born in Webster County, Mississippi, in 1878 and was killed in a traffic accident near Eupora, Mississippi, in 1934. It is said that he wrote most of his songs while serving an eight-year sentence in the state penitentiary.
The song is a resolution about how to live a short life. Each day the singer will help someone in need, because life on earth is a span and the evening sun is sinking; he wants to meet the deeds he has done where there is no setting sun, to try to lift some traveler’s load, and to make flowers bloom along the way. The verses are sung with an echo of each phrase, followed by a chorus about being a child of God each day.
Charlie and Bill Monroe recorded it as the Monroe Brothers at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 28 January 1938, with Charlie singing lead and playing guitar and Bill singing tenor and playing mandolin; Bluebird issued it in May 1938 on B-7562, backed with “When Our Lord Shall Come Again.” The Stanley Brothers recorded it on 8 December 1965 in Concord, Arkansas. The Country Gentlemen recorded it on 9 January 1968 at Roy D. Homer Associates in Clinton, Maryland, for The Traveler and Other Favorites (Rebel), with Charlie Waller on lead vocal and guitar, John Duffey on tenor and mandolin, Eddie Adcock on baritone and banjo and Ed Ferris on bass and bass vocal. Red Smiley and the Blue Grass Cutups recorded it more than once, and it appears on their Rural Rhythm releases from 1967 onward.
