Jan Daley has spent more than five decades in front of audiences, and her latest release returns to a theme she keeps circling back to. “A Time for Hope” arrived on July 31, 2026. The song is a quiet piece of easy listening music about compassion, resilience, and the idea that better days are still ahead. Daley wrote it herself. Motown veteran Michael B. Sutton produced it.
What A Time for Hope Says to Listeners
The song does not argue or preach. It makes room. Daley built the lyric around the small acts of kindness that hold people together when circumstances turn difficult, and the arrangement stays out of her way.
“I’ve always believed music should leave people feeling better than when they arrived,” Daley said. “A Time for Hope is my gift to anyone searching for strength, comfort, or simply a reason to keep believing that brighter days are ahead.”
That approach reflects how she has worked for years. Daley writes plainly, and she trusts the listener to meet her partway. A Time for Hope runs on that restraint rather than on volume.
The Musicians Who Shaped the Recording
Sutton produced the track and played keyboards. He spent seven years as a staff producer and writer at Motown Records after Stevie Wonder discovered him, and his credits include work with Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson, and Diana Ross. Daley has recorded with him for more than a decade.
Guitarist Josh Sklair lays down the acoustic foundation. Sklair spent years as Etta James’s guitarist and musical director, and his playing here is deliberately spare. Keyboardist Hiroshi Upshur, whose touring and session career includes years with Paul Anka, fills in the remaining texture. Nothing on A Time for Hope crowds the vocal, which is the point.
Chart Success in Both Jazz and Country
Daley wrote six of the songs on The Way of a Woman, and the album reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Traditional Jazz Albums chart. It also found an audience on the smooth jazz charts. The title track carried her into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2023, where it became the organization’s official song.
Country radio came calling as well. “The Girl’s in Love” and “Driver’s Seat” each topped the International and Roots country charts, and she picked up a No. 1 country music video along the way. Her country shows blend those originals with the standards audiences grew up on and the stories behind both.
The wider catalog stretches across genres. It includes The Way of a Woman, Where There’s Hope, Broadway Memories, Home for Christmas, His Light, and The Best of Jan Daley.
Five Decades in Television, Film, and Theater
Daley grew up in Inglewood, California, and started piano and voice lessons as a child. Stage musicals came early, with roles in Oklahoma, Anything Goes, and Carousel. She later appeared opposite Peter Marshall in the musical revue And Then She Wrote.
Her screen work placed her alongside Tom Hanks, Peter Fonda, Elliott Gould, and Frankie Avalon. On television she turned up on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The David Frost Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and Bob Hope Christmas specials, with national advertising campaigns filling in the gaps between projects.
Daley came through cancer at 23, and she describes that period as the thing that sharpened her sense of what matters. Asked once to name her greatest production, she answered without hesitation. “My miracle daughter.”
How Bob Hope Shaped Her Sense of Purpose
Daley’s father was a military pilot who never came home from a World War II mission to rescue American prisoners of war. His absence shaped her lifelong respect for people in uniform, and it led to one of the defining chapters of her career.
She toured internationally with Bob Hope, performing for American service members stationed around the world, including the Bob Hope Christmas USO tour in Vietnam. Those shows taught her something she has carried ever since. Music reaches people in conditions where almost nothing else does.
In 2003, the Hope family asked her to sing “Thanks for the Memory” at his funeral service. She continues to perform a Bob Hope tribute concert for theaters, veterans’ events, and patriotic celebrations.
Where to Hear A Time for Hope
A Time for Hope is available on major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music. A music video for the song is posted on Daley’s YouTube channel.
Daley still performs at performing arts centers, country concerts, jazz festivals, churches, corporate events, and private engagements. Booking details and release news are posted on the Jan Daley official website, with show updates and behind the scenes material on her Instagram page and the Jan Daley Facebook page.
