I read on Salon this morning that someone on 'Glee' sang 'A House Is Not A Home' on the most recent episode. You know, that very gleeful Bacharach-David number from 1964 that every high school student in 2010 has on his or her iPod. Can someone explain this show to me? It's about a glee club, and I was in a glee club for a short while in junior high back in the Bacharach-David era, and it was about a bunch of kids singing all together in some semblance of harmony, not about individual show-stopper performances, but it appears as though this 'Glee' series is mainly an excuse for Broadwayish belters to tear it up, which is fine on stage now and then, but I kind of don't want to be yelled at by Kristin Chenoweth when I'm sitting on my couch drinking a Sam Adams Light. I might spill something.

That aside, when did this particular Bacharach-David opus become such a rip-roaring deal anyway? I checked my Billboard Top 100 book, and it was never a hit single. Two versions (by Dionne Warwick and Brook Benton) both hovered in the 70s for a few weeks in 1964, not exactly the chart heights that Burt & Hal generally occupied.

Until I poked around imdb, I'd forgotten that 'A House Is Not A Home' was the theme from a movie (poster above), starring Shelley Winters as a famous madam from the 1920's, so for the purposes of the film, the house was literally not a home. Although you would think a few beds would come in handy, and not just that lonely chair. Also in the movie: Cesar Romero, Robert Taylor, Kaye Ballard, Broderick Crawford, and Edy Williams (from the Russ Meyer body of work) as 'Call Girl.' Is it any wonder this cinematic treasure slipped my mind?

Somehow, the ill-fated song managed to zip past so many other B-D ballads to land in repertoires all over the musical map, from jazz (Stan Getz plays it beautifully, of course), to soul (check out Mavis Staples), and easy listening (Burt's own version on 'Reach Out'). Was it Luther Vandross who made this (admittedly, real pretty) tune a contemporary standard?

Granted, I have not explored the many many renditions of the song, but my vote goes to Dusty Springfield, who could wring genuine emotion out of pretty much anything, and was particularly adept at gliding through Bacharachville ('I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself,' 'The Look Of Love,' 'Close To You,' 'Wishin' and Hopin', and so forth). Here, on TV in what looks like the late '60s, she sings it with Burt: