A "Bissel" of The Barry Sisters, Part 1
"L’Shana Tova’ - You All - as we say in the synagogues of Mobile and New Orleans.
I was prompted to write about the Barry Sisters not just because of the Hebrew holidays, but because the Ed Sullivan Show YouTube channel people, God bless them, have just made available a new clip by this fantastic vocal duo. I am very excited to share it presently.
But first a brief flashback to about 30 years ago: my buddy, David McCain, the great collector-historian and the Boswell of the Boswell Sisters, and I both fell in love with the Barry Sisters not from their many TV appearances, but when Radiola Records released a wonderful three-LP package called Swingin’ Sisters on the Air - we bought it for the Boswells, and, to a lesser extent, the Andrews Sisters, but the Barry Sisters were a revelation to us.
The tracks here capture the two Bagelman Sisters very early in their careers, when they already were stars of Jewish radio, and were featured on The Yiddish Swing Hour, sponsored by the Manischewitz Matzoh Bakers. (I presume this is the same company that made the Manischewitz wine that Lionel Hampton endorsed and which Dizzy Gillespie sang about in “Sunny Side of the Street.” “Life can be so fine / Fine as Manischewitz wine!”)
The Yiddish Swing Hour was on the radio during WW2; every episode has a rather turgid tenor singing a very somber patriotic song. But the Barry numbers are a genuine hoot. I happen to love their first number on this track below. Alas, I don’t speak enough Yiddish to even tell you what the title is - but it’s a hard-swinging, minor-key lament. After a chorus in Yiddish, it slows down, and we hear them singing what sounds like an endearingly awkward translation of Yiddish folk-isms into English:
My uncle Ezra was an actor,
His acting made the public freeze.
My cousin Archie is a bill collector.
And my grandfather manufactures cheese!
Lyrics do not get better than that!
The duo was already recording for RCA Victor by the time they made these shows - which apparently were distributed on transcriptions, three of which are included on the Radiola package. As everyone knows, they were born Minnie Bagelman (1923-1976) and Clara Bagelman (1920-2014), but changed their names to “The Barry Sisters” for mainstream show biz, known as Merna and Claire Barry. Curiously, on The Yiddish Swing Hour, the rather unctuous announcer refers to them as “Pert and Gay.” (For his part, Leonard Maltin reports that when he watched them on TV as a kid, he always assumed their given names were “Merna and Schmerna.”)
Alas, we don’t have any video of the Barry Sisters until 1955 when they appear as an added attraction in a Universal-International musical short starring The Ink Spots and tenor saxophonist George Auld’s All-Stars. After Auld introduces them, they do two songs, both of which they had recorded recently for Archie Bleyer’s Cadence Records, “Let Me Be Your Honey, Honey (Let Me Be Your Love)” (Gwendolen Alexandra Whitworth & Perry Hettel) and “I Hate To Lose You (I'm So Used To You Now)” (Grant Clarke and Archie Gottler), which had been recorded by The Andrews Sisters in 1947. I wouldn’t quite say it represents the Barrys at their best, but it’s a charming segment.
Thank you Mark Cantor for both the clip itself and the personnel, which is the same, except where noted, for both the audio recording session and the on-screen “sidelining” performance: trumpet: Ray Linn (soundtrack) or Peter Curti (on screen); trombone: Quentin Anderson; piano: Ian Bernard; guitar: Barney Kessel (soundtrack) or Dudley Ross (screen); bass: Walter (Buddy) Clark (soundtrack) or William (Bill) Cooper (screen); drums: Sid Bulkin. Dates: recording: May 27, 1955; sideline: May 31, 1955.
The overall greatest footage we have of Merna and Claire comes from three episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show - which is a small sample of their many appearances on that program - over a dozen shows between 1956 and 1965. These are all terrific!
In 1963, they came out looking totally fierce and lunged into a remarkable piece of special material. This is a thoroughly swinging mashup of the traditional African-American spiritual “Dry Bones” with Cole Porter’s “All Of You.” “Them bones, them bones, gonna one day kill me!” (January 6, 1963)
From a gospel song to a classic calypso, this was only recently released by the Sullivan people and it may be the single most dynamic number ever by Merna and Claire. Again, it’s a special material masterpiece - who was doing these charts for them? - that moves like crazy, and is loaded with Morey Amsterdam style one-liners. (“Cleopatra wound up on the rocks / And so did Twentieth Century Fox.”) This is a mashup of jazz and Caribbean rhythms that reminds me of Woody Herman and Louis Jordan’s early Calypso crossovers. (March 3, 1964)
As a bonus, I’m throwing in the original Trinidadian recording by songwriter and Calypso shouter King Radio (Norman Span).
Next and last is the only footage we have of the Barrys in color - from their final Sullivan appearance - and the closest thing we have, video wise, to them doing an actual Yiddish song, namely “Nature Boy,” which was supposedly based on the 1935 “Papirrosen.” (There’s a whole story about that, as you can imagine.) This is another example of the Barrys using an older song to introduce a newer one: the Eden Ahbez anthem proceeds directly into the more contemporary “King of the Road.” I never heard this Roger Miller classic swing so much, and the gals’ Al Hibbler-style mock-cockney accent reminiscent of “ain’t got no cigarettes” is delightful. (November 14, 1965)
The Barrys also participated in a big production number later in the same show, along with Sullivan’s singers and dancers. “Every Street's a Boulevard in Old New York” isfrom Hazel Flagg, which, as Slouching Towards Birdlanders know, was Jule Styne and Bob Hilliard’s 1953 Broadway musical version of the 1937 screwball comedy film Nothing Sacred and which itself was adapted into the 1954 Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis vehicle Living It Up. Hopefully the Sullivan channel will make this available sometime soon - if not least because the Merna and Claire look adorable in Gay ‘90s drag.
It’s worth noting that the gals were already in their forties by the time of these Sullivan shows, which is fairly long-in-the-tooth for female singers and sister acts at that point in our unfortunate cultural history, yet they look at least 15-20 years younger on screen. We’ll get into more aspects of those lovable, pert, and gay gals in the next post.
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
TWO HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED FORTHCOMING EVENTS AT THE TRIAD ON SUNDAY OCTOBER 27
Private Event for SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND subscribers!
(please RSVP me at wfriedwald@gmail.com)
Sunday October 27 - doors open @ 7:30PM, film to start at appx 8:00PM
The Triad Theater &
Will Friedwald's CLIP JOINT present
LIKE TOTALLY TOGA-LICIOUS!
THE BIG HALLOWEEN 2024 TOGA PARTY
featuring a screening of RICHARD LESTER's great 1966 film version of STEPHEN SONDHEIM'S classic Broadway musical, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
starring ZERO MOSTEL, JACK GILFORD, MICHAEL CRAWFORD, PHIL SILVERS, & BUSTER KEATON
plus a mini Clip Joint Broadway mixtape of classic FORUM numbers from vintage 1960s variety shows.
no cover - but we will ask everyone to kick in a little $ (on a volunteer basis) to pay the projectionist
drinks available & encouraged (cash bar)
Proper ANCIENT ROMAN / TOGA attire recommended!
A matinee screening of the Twilight Zone episode “A Stop at Willoughby” (creator Rod Serling’s favorite episode) and the 1968 cult film The Swimmer (starring Burt Lancaster, based on John Cheever’s greatest short story) is at The Triad Theater, a cabaret-sized upstairs room on West 72nd street, sporting a brand new 4k projection system with 12.3 surround sound, on Sunday, October 27 at 2:00PM (note updated date & time) : for more info bit.ly/3MUMQ5k
Read Arlen’s article about “The Twilight Zone and The Swimmer”: bit.ly/47y8sxY
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.
SING! SING! SING!
October 5: The BOBBY SHORT Centennial “Afro-Centric”
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Never heard of those two before, but they're worth investigating further.