Baby Songs Top Ten: Baby, Its Cold Outside (#6)

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Monday to ya! I have an ear infection (blech), so I’m taking it easy. I’m also taking my favorite throat medication (Chuy’s salsa) to soothe the problems caused by the nasal spray. I hate ear infections. But I love music, and so here’s another song from my list of favorites with “baby” in the title. Presenting a song you know....in a way you’ve never heard before. #6: Baby, It’s Cold Outside - Homer & Jethro with June Carter Truth: I never knew there was another version of this song when I was a kid! There are a number of songs that Homer & Jethro did that I never heard the original renditions of until way later (including “Green Door,” which they spoofed as “Screen Door”). Now, here’s an interesting thing: there was, according to Jethro Burns, an “unwritten rule” that Broadway shows were “off limits” for parodists. Homer and Jethro, though, never lived by the “rules.” While this isn’t exactly re-written the way something like their Grammy-winning “The Battle of Kookamonga” (or Weird Al’s “Ricky”), it’s definitely NOT what you expect when you see that song’s title. RCA executives were aware of that “unwritten rule,” so they contacted the song’s writer, Frank Loesser, and “warned him” about this. The result: Loesser loved it. So much so that he wrote the liner notes for Homer & Jethro Fracture Frank Loesser. He also made a request: he wanted the songwriter credit to read “With Apologies to Frank Loesser.” And so it was. This was Homer & Jethro’s first major success....and June Carter’s! She was a member of the Carter Family (the second-generation), and their guitar player was Jethro’s brother-in-law. Maybe you’ve heard of him? Chet Atkins? No, not what you’re expecting when you see the title. But it’s the one I grew up with, and it’s the one I still go to. Baby, It’s Cold Outside Written by Frank Loesser, Henry Haynes, and Kenneth Burns (“With Apologies to Frank Loesser”) Recorded by Homer & Jethro with June Carter Released as a single, 1949 Put some Eddy Arnold records on while I pour: