Tony Award-nominee Melissa Errico and Billboard Chart-topping pianist Lara Downes have come together to collaborate on a new recording of the Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg classic: “Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe.”

Released on December 4 2020, the new recording and accompanying holiday-themed music video marks the first collaboration between one of America’s most beloved singer/actors in Errico, with one of its most admired and protean pianists in Downes, coming together to salute the unique mix of charm and liberal consciousness that mark all of E. Y. Harburg’s lyrics, and the matchless melodic flow of Harold Arlen’s music.

Written for the great Ethel Waters in the 1943 musical Cabin In The Sky–one of the few films of its time featuring African American performers to seek and win approval for its script from the era’s civil rights leadership–“Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe” is a love song of daily comfort, rather than a torch song of longing—and it speaks to our shared need in this uniquely painful year for the healing power of simple happiness.

“Sometimes the cabin’s gloomy and the table’s bare / But when he kisses me it’s Christmas everywhere,” the lyric declares at its climax, making romantic love and domestic love part of a single beautiful moment.