Songfacts®:

• Peggy Day stole Dylan's heart away, and there's nothing more that Dylan wants than to spend the night with her. That's the gist of this doo-wop country song, which is completely devoid of pretense or ambiguity.
  
  Its simplicity wouldn't mean much from most other musicians, but for an artist whose lyrics only two years earlier were so impactful that revolutionary political groups and spiritual seekers alike scrutinized them for signs and guidance, it was inscrutable at best and betrayal at worst.
  
  Dylan just wanted to have fun with the Nashville Skyline album. He was coming off 14 months of rest and recuperation from both the physical damage of a motorcycle accident and the psychological damage of years of pushing himself to the limit in touring and recording. He was feeling good and didn't want to get caught back up in the cyclone from which he'd barely escaped alive.
• Dylan said he thought about The Mills Brothers while writing this one. The Mills Brothers were a successful Ohio-based African American vocal quartet active from 1928 to 1982.
• There's a version of this song with Dylan and Johnny Cash recording together. It happened sometime during February 17-18, 1969, in CBS Studios in Nashville. None of the songs the pair did together were meant for release, but they snuck out into the public as a bootleg titled The Dylan/Cash Sessions.
• Dylan never performed "Peggy Day" live.
• This was the B-side to the "Lay Lady Lay" single.