"In Your Own Sweet Way" is written in the key of B flat major, and is a jazz ballad in thirty-two-bar form with an eight-bar interlude typically played between each chorus.

[2] The first quartet version appeared on the 1956 album Dave Brubeck and Jay & Kai at Newport, issued on the Columbia label.

An orchestral arrangement of the piece by Howard Brubeck appeared on the quartet's live 1963 album Brandenburg Gate: Revisited.

[11] Composer and arranger Clare Fischer recorded a solo piano version in 1963, which was featured on his album Easy Livin' three years later.

[13] Art Farmer and Lee Konitz covered it in 1994 with the Joe Carter Quartet and Trio,[14] as did pianist Robert Glasper in 2006.