“We take a tune that’s sweet and low, and rock it solid and make it gold.” And rock it solid they did, on Our Way, The Barry Sisters’ eleventh, and last, full-length studio recording. Throughout their career, they consistently drew from the wells of Yiddish and English popular song, everything from “Without a Song” and “Cry Me a River” to “Hava Nagila” and “Chiribim Chiribom”. If adapting Jewish music to the rhythms and contours of the American pop landscape can be considered one of the dominant aesthetics of early twentieth century popular music, then the Barry Sisters ought to be considered crucial bi-cultural pioneers, part of the same treasured artistic genealogy that usually starts and stops with the Tin Pan Alley likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Harold Arlen. They didn’t turn America Jewish, they made Jewish sound more American.

On Our Way, The Barry Sisters choose the elegant tradition of popular song itself. They took on the 20s pop chestnut “Tea For Two,” used Yiddish to return the vanilla Perry Como smash “It’s Impossible” to its Mexican bolero roots, raided Hollywood for “Love Story” (imagine Ryan O’Neal crooning in Yiddish at the bedside of a dying Kelly McGraw), raided Broadway for “Cabaret” and “Alice Blue Gown,” and turned out what just might be-- second only to the one Cuban audio priestess La Lupe did just three years earlier-- the most liberating version ever of the Sinatra staple, “My Way.”

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The 1959 lost classic, Folk Songs for Far Out Folk by Jazz Innovator, Fred Katz, the gentleman who wrote the original score to Little Shop of Horrors, brought the cello to the forefront of the jazz repertoire as part of the legendary Chico Hamilton Quintet, and gave the world the ever-popular Sidney Poitier Reads Plato. Katz believed that jazz was born from "the roots of the people." The roots he explores here are American, Hebrew, and African folk songs, all reinterpreted by Katz for jazz orchestras. The Hebrew folk songs speak to Katz's own roots as the Brooklyn-born son of a kabbalist and communist dentist. Katz is joined by the legendary likes of saxophonist Paul Horn, flutist Buddy Collette, and pianist John Williams (years before he composed the score to Star Wars).

"I'm open to anything," Katz says, "except music that's played badly." As such, he has agreed to release—through Reboot Stereophonic—some music played quite well: Folk Songs for Far Out Folk.

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PHOTOS OF FRED KATZ

The trick with Streophonic's latest release, Jewface, is mentioning it to loved ones and not getting smacked. In the event of such a reaction, quickly explain that Jewface is the world's first and only anthology of Jewish minstrel songs, featuring works from Irving Berlin, Gus Kahn, Fanny Brice, Billy Murray, and other vaudeville greats from the turn of the 20 th century. Jewface brings together such rare old-school gems as "Cohen Owes me 97 Dollars," "Under the Matzos Tree," and "I'm a Yiddish Cowboy." You could make these up, but we haven't. The songs are unbelievably real. They predate irony, and yourself.

Jewface curator Jody Rosen spent over 12 years traveling the country, hunting down the original wax cylinders and seventy-eight disc recordings. His hard work has not only yielded a treasure-trove of re-mastered original recordings from 1903-1924, but also has unmasked a forgotten dirty secret of pop music history; that some of the first hit records ever made were fiendishly catchy musical lampoons, created by Jews, for Jews, and actually loaded with anti-Semitic stereotypes.

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VIEW A GALLERY OF JEWFACE SHEET MUSIC

READ JEWFACE LINER NOTES

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For those few suffering music fans who don't immediately think of Kraftwerk-esque electronica when they hear melodic Jewish liturgy, treatment is now available by mail-order. God Is a Moog is a double album featuring recordings from 1968 to 1974, in which pioneering musician, and Moog keyboard innovator, Gershon Kingsley attempted to fuse the machine and the divine. Using his creativity, the Moog, and a few choice Proverbs, Kingsley recorded everything from meditations on identity and freedom, to a rock opera for the Sabbath (written to include a gospel choir). Be warned, the album is as infectious as it is intelligent, which is to say, it just might blow your mind. In addition, you, who have previously been described as "endearingly awkward and strangely moving," might be interested to know that the very same words were used by Time Out New York to describe God Is a Moog. Though, Time Out also called it an example of "radical Jewish culture decades before John Zorn coined the term," and that bit doesn't sound like you at all. Find out more about Robert Moog, the visionary who invented the Moog Synthesizer.

KINGSLEY ON WNYC'S 'SOUNDCHECK' PROGRAM

GERSHON KINGSLEY VIDEOS

Your Miami-bound snowbird grandparents weren't the first Jews to embrace the mambo pace. Neither was Irving Fields, incidentally, though he's probably the first person to lay down a fusion of Jewish rhythm and Cuban and Puerto Rican stylistics on wax. Reboot Stereophonic’s first release is a re-mastered version of the 1959 ground-breaking release, Bagels and Bongos, by the Irving Fields Trio. Using Latin music as an idiom of Jewish expression, a new language of a hybridized, flexible Jewish identity was born—and no one's heard from the old language of hybridized, flexible Jewish identity since. Bagels and Bongos features classic reinterpretations of numbers like "My Yiddishe Momme" and "Bei Mir Bist Du Shon," as well as the transformation of "Hava Negillah" into "Havannah Negillah," bound to shake some tuchuses enough to seriously throw off a game of shuffleboard.

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PEEK INSIDE THE WORLD OF IRVING FIELDS

SEE THE FABULOUS FINGERS IN ACTION