The Do-Not-Play List

There are a lot of winter and Yuletide songs we would be happy to have banned from the airwaves, but "Baby, It's Cold Outside" wasn't one of them. Even so, it has now been exiled to the do-not-play list of numerous radio outlets, joining "Love for Sale," "Rocks in My Bed," "Harvard Blues" and Cab Calloway's version of "The Old Rugged Cross."

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" was written by Frank Loesser, whose magnum opi include "Guys and Dolls," "The Most Happy Fella" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," along with a string of standards that would stretch from Tin Pan Alley to Timbuktu.

Loesser had never intended the song to be a commercial release--he wrote it in 1944 as something he and his wife, Lynn Garland, could perform at holiday parties. They got invited to a lot of parties, and four years later, Loesser was persuaded to let the song be used in a film. It won the Academy Award as best movie song of 1948.

Since then, there have been any number of recordings. Among those we'd like to hear, or hear again, was one waxed, as deejays used to say, by Pearl Bailey and Hot Lips Page. There are also versions by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Ray Charles and Betty Carter, Bette Midler and James Caan, and--perhaps oddest of all--Homer and Jethro with June Carter.

The composer's wife was not happy when the couple's party number was shared with the world. Perhaps she is smiling now, with "Baby, It's Cold Outside" returned to the family.

Put a record on, while I pour...