Written by the group's founder, Randy Sparks, it was introduced in the American comedy-Western film Advance to the Rear (1964) and released on the album titled Today.

Randy Sparks founded the American large-ensemble folk-music group The New Christy Minstrels in 1961, during popular music's folk revival.

[3] On the verge of exiting the group, whose name he would sell to its managers, Sparks ...contracted to write the score for a film comedy set during the Civil War titled Advance to the Rear, and as part of that soundtrack he wrote "Today" (perhaps better recognizable from its opening line, "Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine"), its simple folk style reflecting the 19th-century time period of the film.

The temporal tone of the lyric, in turn, may have reflected the film's wartime setting ("Who cares what the morrow may bring?")...

[5][6] Vocalists on the original release of "Today" include New Christy Minstrels members Barry McGuire, later to issue the solo hit "Eve of Destruction", and Gene Clark, who would go on to co-found the rock band The Byrds.