The Best of The Barry Sisters

Once known as the Bagelman Sisters, Clara and Minnie Bagelman were best known professionally as The Barry Sisters. They are originally from the Bronx, New York, and occupied an important space in a relatively obscure musical genre: Yiddish jazz. That's right, these ladies took swingin' jazz/lounge songs (as well as jazz-ified non-jazz songs), translated them into Yiddish, and sang them with some seriously sweet sisterly harmony. This, like the last post on this blog, was one of those "accidental" finds, but I'm so happy I spent the $2 or whatever it was to get this. It's a great listen!

Red Nichols and the Five Pennies

Red Nichols was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader active from the 1920s until his death in 1965. He was probably best known for his big hit "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider", in 1927.

His life was portrayed by Danny Kaye in the 1959 semi-autobiographical film The Five Pennies, which was nominated for four Academy Awards.

This album falls squarely into the "hey, I have no idea what this is, but it looks like fun and only costs 75 cents, let's see what happens" category, but it turned out to be a good gamble. This also explains why I don't know much about the band otherwise, and had to pull most of the info above from Wikipedia ... lol. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, it's fun stuff indeed!