Growing up in the United States Midwest, Nancie Brodhead listened to the music of composers like the Gershwin brothers and Rodgers and Hammerstein. As an adult, she performed their timeless songs in karaoke, but it was not until last year that she finally recorded a standard from the 1940s.

Brodhead covered Sentimental Journey as A Reggae Sentimental Journey. Originally done by Doris Day in 1945, it is co-written by Ben Homer, Les Brown and Bud Green.

Her version is produced by Jamaican Alphonso “King Shark” Henclewood for his New Mexico-based Montego Records.

“I have always loved Sentimental Journey, a song my mother used to play on our piano when I was a child. Alphonso ‘King Shark’ Henclewood, a dear friend, proposed that I sing it, and sing it against a reggae rhythm,” she told the Jamaica Observer. “He gave me a dub he had produced, and coached me. Learning to sing against a reggae beat was challenging but great fun.”

A Reggae Sentimental Journey was released on February 14. It was recorded at The Kitchen Sink Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Jamaican musicians Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace (drums), Harry T (percussion), Nambo Robinson (trombone), Robbie Lyn (keyboards) and guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith playing their parts in Kingston.

Though she came of age during the 1980s, the Wisconsin-born Brodhead has always been enamoured of songs that were themes for Broadway or Hollywood musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them were composed by the Gershwins (Ira and George), Rodgers and Hammerstein or Rodgers and Hart.

“They have always been of great interest to me. I love the simplicity of theme, the purity of content, the classic and extraordinary blending of words and music,” she said.

Putting her spin on a song like Sentimental Journey, Brodhead adds, is a dream come true.

“My greatest musical wish was to bring back some of those classic tunes for the generations of people who have never heard them before,” she said.

— Howard Campbell