Our Way

Born to Yiddish speaking immigrants in the Bronx, the Barry Sisters rose to the forefront of the Jewish-American music world in the 1930s through their early recordings with RCS Victor and their association with the biggest names on the Second Avenue scene. They became the official voices of the Yiddish Swing Craze in the '40s and '50s during their tenure on Sam Medoff's radio shows, and went on to release a slew of singles and full-length LPs that garnered them recognition beyond the confines of the Jewish musical community. Our Way is the eleventh and final album by the Barry Sisters, released by Mainstream Records in 1973. On this album, the sisters took on the '20s pop chestnut "Tea For Two" and used Yiddish to return the vanilla Perry Como smash "It's Impossible" to its Mexican bolero roots. They raided Hollywood for "Love Story" (imagine Ryan O'Neal crooning in Yiddish at the bedside of a dying Ali McGraw), raided Broadway for "Cabaret" and "Alice Blue Gown," and turned out what just might be--second only to the version Cuban audio priestess La Lupe did just three years earlier--the most liberating version ever of the Sinatra staple "My Way." So they didn't sing "What's Goin' On" or "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (which, for what it's worth, would have been called "Ikh vil zein dein hoont"). The effect was still the same: seventies America woke up in a Technicolor Yiddish dream.