This fabulous jazzy Big Band track was arranged by Andy Carvill and Barry Cowles, who heads up Keyboard Players Club duetted with me to create this fun song based on the Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton version.    This was mixed and mastered by Tom Doughty, Studio Principal and Partner of  NeverEverMedia Studios.   My huge thanks to this wonderful team - this song was launched 13th December 2022

 

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a popular song written by Frank Loesser in 1944 and popularized in the 1949 film Neptune's Daughter. While the lyrics make no mention of a holiday, it is commonly regarded as a Christmas song owing to its winter theme. The song was released in eight recordings in 1949 and has been covered numerous times since.

 

During the 1940s, whenever Hollywood celebrities with vocal talents attended parties, they were expected to perform songs. In 1944, Loesser wrote "Baby, It's Cold Outside" to sing with his wife, Lynn Garland, at their housewarming party in New York City at the Navarro Hotel. They sang the song to indicate to guests that it was time to leave.   Garland has written that after the first performance, "We became instant parlor room stars. We got invited to all the best parties for years on the basis of 'Baby.' It was our ticket to caviar and truffles. Parties were built around our being the closing act.”   In 1948, after years of performing the song, Loesser sold it to MGM for the 1949 romantic comedy Neptune's Daughter. Garland was furious: "I felt as betrayed as if I'd caught him in bed with another woman."

According to Esther Williams, the producers of Neptune's Daughter had planned to use a different Loesser song, "(I'd Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China", but studio censors thought it was too suggestive and replaced it with "Baby."

The song won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Lyrics

The song is a call and response duet between two people, a host (called "Wolf" in the score, usually performed by a male singer) and a guest (called "Mouse", usually performed by a female). Every line in the song features a statement from the guest followed by a response from the host. The lyrics consist of the host trying to convince the guest that she should stay for a romantic evening because he fears her getting too cold outside, despite the fact that she feels she should return home to her concerned family and neighbors.    In the film Neptune's Daughter, the song is first performed by Ricardo Montalbán and Esther Williams, then with a comic parody twist by Betty Garrett and Red Skelton: this time the man wants to leave and the woman wants him to stay.

In at least one published version the tempo of the song is given as "Loesserando", a humorous reference to the composer's name.