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The world is wonderful, more than ever, which is why I was recently puzzled by something written in these pages. Ninalee Allen Craig, known as Jinx Allen in 1951, was interviewed about her featured role in Ruth Orkin's famous photograph, the one where Craig was captured walking down a Florence street past a group of leering Italian men. Then an American tourist in her mid-twenties, Craig didn't feel threatened by the ogling men. She said she hoped the photograph would inspire young women to travel, but that these days they would need to be more careful. “Our world is much, much uglier today,” she judged.

Is it, really? Was post-Second World War Europe so beautiful? Are things so bad today?

Of course not, but the perception that present days are worse days is nothing new. At any time in history, the grass was greener several decades prior, when nobody needed to lock their doors and you could buy a dollar with a nickel! It was 40 years ago that songwriters Bob Thiele and George David Weiss composed the classic What a Wonderful World, a hummable tune for the froggy-voiced, hankie-dabbing trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Against the backdrop of race riots and the Vietnam War, the balmy song was hopeful for the future, with lines about blooming trees and babies learning. Thiele once said the song was about “how good things really could be.”

Over the years, the song has become a holiday standard, its cheerful optimism and placid melody suitable for the season, though it has nothing to do with Christmas itself. Now, four decades after its original release, What a Wonderful World has been rerecorded and released as a digital single by the Anti-record label, performed by alt-folk chanteuse Jolie Holland and soul-music legend Booker T. Jones.

Listen to the song here

In their hands, it's less a pop song than was Armstrong's version. Holland's vocals are supple and curvy, loitering along a pseudo-jazz chord structure until the mood turns more soulful, finally ending with the singer's carefree whistling. As for the song's conceit, Jones believes it's as relevant as ever. “It is a wonderful world,” the Hammond B-3 veteran says, “it absolutely is. You can't judge by newspaper headlines, because print publications are geared to sell copies. Sensationalism sells.”

Jones was the leader of the Memphis-based Booker T. & the MGs, which backed such singers as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Carla Thomas in the 1960s, and scored instrumental hits themselves (Green Onion, Hip Hug-Her). He remembers the riotous era when the song was written, and believes the lyrical optimism has been realized. “There's forward progress,” he says, from his home north of San Francisco, “in terms of numbers, in terms of the temperament of the human heart.”

We pay attention to all the new Christmas albums every year, but what's memorable about seasonal music are the singles; the albums, in large part, are marketing. Radio stations convert their play lists to the holiday pop classics, in all their different forms: the smooth (Bing Crosby's White Christmas, Gene Autry's Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Burl Ives's A Holly Jolly Christmas, Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song), the rock (Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Comin' to Town), the retro (Bobby Helms's Jingle Bell Rock, Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree), the uplifting (John Lennon's Happy Xmas, Band Aid's Do They Know it's Christmas?), and the novel (Elmo & Patsy's Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer and, my personal favourite, those barking dogs doing Jingle Bells).

Though it was a hit in England upon its 1967 release, What a Wonderful World flopped in the United States. It took time, and placement in the soundtrack of 1987's Good Morning, Vietnam, before the song became popular.

Holland's and Jones's version likely won't be a hit right away either, but there's time. As for the world's condition, Jones sees better days – and better people. Of the cozy line about seeing friends shaking hands, saying “How do you do?” when what they're really saying is “I love you,” Jones agrees.

“For every one person that's doing something untoward, you've got 500 or a thousand people who are trying to help somebody,” he says. “That's been my experience. That's what the ratio is. That's the way the world is.”