Just before Thanksgiving 2012, Milyn Satterfield asked me to write a music review of nine songs her grandmother ,Carole Hennessey, recorded in the late Seventies.  I accepted the offer, not because I have ANY experience as a music critic but because I have a lot of experience as a Tuscaloosa music fan. I've hung out in Tuscaloosa and Northport bars for the past 44 years so I've heard a lot of great live music and I also have many pleasant memories of listening to Carole and the outstanding Tuscaloosa musicians who accompanied her in the various Tuscaloosa nightspots she performed.

I also have many pleasant memories of standing in Dude and Carole Hennessey's Wesley Place front yard on Sunday afternoons gossiping with them about all that is Alabama football. Coach Hennessey (like HENNESSY COGNAC but with an extra "e") played for Coach Bryant at Kentucky and served as a Crimson Tide assistant under THE Bear from 1960 until 1976. After that he always had some job connected to Bama football up until his death at age 81 in March of 2011. 

GOD BLESS THE CHILD www.reverbnation.com/open_graph/song/9103648
is the first cut on Carole's REVERBNATION webpage. I can't remember where I first heard this old song but I was most familiar with the BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS version that came out my freshman year at Bama. Later on Diana Ross' LADY SINGS THE BLUES came out the year after I graduated so I was familiar with a horn band version and a jazz vocalist version of this Billie Holiday classic.


As I hear the first tinkling of the ivories, my mind flashes back to the superb jazz pianist who performs on this recording: JEROME HOPKINS and when Carole takes off we know that years ago Tuscaloosa had its own TORCH SINGER'S TORCH SINGER.

Billie, Ella, Aretha, Whitney and Diana are all just fine but give me Carole Hennessey any old time.

"Money you got. You got lots of friends hangin' 'round your door."

Carole never repeats a verse of the song in the same way.

"Money! You've got lots and lots of friends stacked up at your front door."

And neither does Jerome repeat a note or chord.
It's just like Jerome said in a 1983 Ben Windham interview, " It's (i.e. Jazz) a very personal thing. It's like speaking or telling a story your way - how you comprehend it, how you feel about it, how you see it."

No matter what your taste in music, Carole and Jerome's interpretation of Billie Holiday's blues makes the cares of the world melt away for fans of all varieties.

This first cut ends with the appropriate audience applause but, later on in Carole's recordings, you'll hear that the crowd gets a little "well oiled" as we say in T-town. In fact, you can almost imagine Coach Bryant in the crowd wishing Alabama fans would take Carole's next tune to heart as Jerome begins banging out the chords of another classic,PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I'M GONE.

You know, these days there are still probably some old Carole Hennessey promotional posters laying around some student ghetto attic in Tuscaloosa. Some ads promoting one of Carole's long forgotten performances lays mouldering in a stack of old newspapers in someone's garage and a few matchbook covers from some now defunct Tuscaloosa night club that enjoyed Carole's performance still linger in some trunk but as far as I know these nine songs are all that remains of those long ago Friday and Saturday nights so click on these links and enjoy some slow blues or a jazzy side of country with Carole and her gang.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19830529&id=9EkgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1qUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6316,6948918