"One Less Bell to Answer" is a song written by Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach

Burt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick...

 and Hal David

Hal David

Harold Lane "Hal" David is an American lyricist. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. David is best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach.-Career:...

. Originally written in 1967 for Keely Smith

Keely Smith

Keely Smith is an American jazz and popular music singer who enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. She collaborated with, among others, Louis Prima and Frank Sinatra.-Career:...

, the song was rediscovered in late 1969 by Bones Howe

Bones Howe

Dayton Burr "Bones" Howe is a Grammy-award-winning record producer and recording engineer associated with 1960s and 1970s hits, mostly of the sunshine pop genre, including most of the hits of The 5th Dimension and The Association, as well as music supervision of several films...

, the producer for The 5th Dimension, and the song was included on the group's 1970

1970 in music

- Events :*January 3**Davy Jones announces he is leaving the Monkees**Former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett releases his first solo album The Madcap Laughs....

 debut album for Bell Records

Bell Records

Bell Records was an American record label founded in 1952 by Arthur Shimkin in New York, the owner of children's record label Golden Records, and initially a unit of Pocket Books, after the rights to the name were acquired from Benny Bell who used the Bell name to issue risque novelty records. A...

, Portrait. Lead vocals on the single were sung by Marilyn McCoo

Marilyn McCoo

Marilyn McCoo is an American singer, actress, and television presenter, who is best known for being the lead female vocalist in the group The 5th Dimension, as well as hosting the 1980s music countdown series Solid Gold...

. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 chart and No. 4 on the Best Selling Soul Singles

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

 chart in 1970. It also went to No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart that same year.

This version of the song was prominently featured at the same time in an episode of the Robert Wagner

Robert Wagner

Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...

 TV series, It Takes a Thief.

Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian , which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 –...

 had a national Easy Listening

Easy listening

Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...

 chart record of this song in 1968. Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand

Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...

 partially covered the song in the medley One Less Bell to Answer/A House is Not a Home on her 1971 album Barbra Joan Streisand

Barbra Joan Streisand (album)

Barbra Joan Streisand is an album by Barbra Streisand, released in August, 1971 on Columbia Records.- Chart and sale :The album reached #11 on Billboard's Pop Albums Chart and was certified Gold by the RIAA.-Track listing:Side One:...

. Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....

 recorded a version of the song on her 1972 Warner Bros.

Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

 album, Dionne; Bacharach and David produced their track for Warwick. Another 1972 cover was by Shirley Bassey

Shirley Bassey

Dame Shirley Bassey, DBE , is a Welsh singer. She found fame in the late 1950s and was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century"...

 on her album I Capricorn

I Capricorn

I Capricorn is a 1972 album by Shirley Bassey.Following on from the success of her previous two albums, I Capricorn saw Bassey still in the midst of her revival in the 1970s. Some months earlier she had released the single "For All We Know", which had become one of the biggest hits of her career,...

. Vikki Carr

Vikki Carr

Vikki Carr is an American singer and humanitarian from El Paso, Texas. She has performed in a variety of music genres, including jazz, pop and country, but has enjoyed her greatest success singing in Spanish.-Career:After taking the stage name 'Vikki Carr', she signed with Liberty Records in 1962...

, Michael Ball

Michael Ball (singer)

Michael Ashley Ball, born 27 June 1962) is a British actor, singer, and radio and TV presenter who is best known for the song "Love Changes Everything" and musical theatre roles such as Marius in Les Misérables, Alex in Aspects of Love, Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Edna Turnblad...

, Vanessa Williams

Vanessa L. Williams

Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American pop-R&B recording artist, producer, dancer, model, actress and showgirl. In 1983, she became the first woman of African-American descent to be crowned Miss America, but a scandal generated by her having posed for nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine...

, Trijntje Oosterhuis

Trijntje Oosterhuis

Judith Katrijntje "Trijntje" Oosterhuis is a Dutch pop and jazz singer.-Early life:Judith Katrijntje Oosterhuis was born on 5 February 1973, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands...

, and Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Suzanne Crow is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, folk, hip hop, country and pop...

 have also performed covers, and the song (specifically the Streisand medley version) was performed in an episode of the American television series Glee

Glee (TV series)

Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that airs on Fox in the United States, and on GlobalTV in Canada. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing on the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues...

.