Minnie and Clara were born in the
Bronx, New York, to
Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Herman and Ester, from the
Russian and
Austro-Hungarian Empires, respectively. Herman Bagelman was born in present-day
Berdychiv, Ukraine. Minnie and Clara also had two younger sisters, Celia and Julia. When Minnie and Clara decided to entertain by singing in
Yiddish, as
The Bagelman Sisters, their father told them they would need to do it in the manner of the
Old World and not with
American accents. The young girls got their first break as singers on WLTH Radio's
Uncle Norman show for children and were still then known as
The Bagelman Sisters. They cut their first recordings with
Victor Records in the late 1930s, Their recordings included popular tunes, such as "
Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", translated into Yiddish ("Trop'ns Fin Regen Oif Mein Kop"). They also performed in
New York's
Catskills resort hotels. They eventually toured with
Mickey Katz. During the height of their popularity, they made appearances on the
Ed Sullivan Show,
The Jack Paar Program and
The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. They were one of the few American acts to tour the
Soviet Union in 1959. Israel and
Zionism were common themes in their music, and the sisters entertained
Israeli troops during the
Yom Kippur War. The Barry Sisters "didn't look like the typical Yiddish theater stars or singers of that era", it was observed. "They looked glamorous. And they spared no expense for their orchestrations—they always had the best orchestrations possible." The sisters' 11th and final album,
Our Way, was issued in 1973. ==Personal lives==