Showtune Sunday: See Kurt & Blaine’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” plus other versions of the classic song

This pop standard got the first same-sex treatment that I know of on an episode of Glee last season when lovebirds Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine (Darren Criss) did a memorable duet.

Though the song does not specifically reference any holiday, it is often regarded as a Christmas song due to the lyric’s depiction of a snowy backdrop. The words and music are by Frank Loesse who won an Academy Award when the song was included in the film Neptune’s Daughter. It was sung twice in that picture – first by Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams then by Betty Garrett and Red Sketlon.

Others to record it over the years were Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Dinah Shore, Ray Charles, and Dean Martin, among others. More recent duets were Barry Manilow and KT Oslin and James Taylor and Natalie Cole.