http://youtu.be/eTUQy0ijNcc Live At Blues Alley~Eva Cassidy *Hard to believe that 10 months to the day of this performance at Blues Alley, Eva would die from cancer.
http://youtu.be/bXU219b3Zdw Eva Cassidy Story~ABC Nightline
http://youtu.be/AFFo1pu4q7Q Songbird~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/J8W9rPxxnP4 People Get Ready-Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/sYyQcQSqpbI Bridge Over Troubled Water-Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/5xv5t70u-ZI Who Knows Where The Time Goes~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/D43QBBc7IvY Forever~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/d3qTecMMCFg Drown in my Own Tears~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/8EmnmYtLW14 Say Goodbye~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/DTVsp_q8mxE Imagine~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/Dc75Mwg4I0c Son of a Preacher Man~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/XRNleKBDCNw Chain of Fools~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/L8x0BYijc94 At Last~Eva Cassidy [Live at Fleetwood’s]
http://youtu.be/Efro-QrHdnk Fields In Gold~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/nzFdlLzhVhM Autumn Leaves~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/BTNRN4rsfX8 Early Morning Rain~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/f5EesOU5oc0 Somewhere Over The Rainbow~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/g7r-_oH1A5E Stay~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/GNLfAnWe12g O Danny Boy~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/X6Oq-WQ-Sy4 What a Wonderful World~Eva Cassidy
http://youtu.be/gW-nsqUAY6A I Know You By Heart~Eva Cassidy
“I really like to create the sound of a choir the most. If you could see what the sound of it looks like when I shut my eyes and listen, you'd see the sound as angels spanning across the universe.”
~Eva Cassidy
How many of you have ever heard the true voice of an angel? If you’ve heard it, there is no mistaking it. I’ve been fortunate to have heard that glorious sound about a half a dozen times in my life, give or take. It’s not a compliment I readily give away, because it means something to give it. It’s special, and special doesn’t happen often, which is why this particular high praise is reserved for truly worthy beneficiaries of such a distinction. Eva Cassidy had such a voice.
For me, her voice is like honey~butter, but not just ANY honey~butter: Tupelo Honey and Kerry Gold Irish Butter. If you’ve ever tasted either, you know it’s the best — rich, sweet, smooth, silky, decadent — unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. That’s what listening to Eva Cassidy’s voice is like — unlike anything you’ve EVER experienced before! Yes. It's Just. Like. That. It puts the definition of “amazing” to a whole other dimensional context.
Many of you have probably never heard of Eva Marie Cassidy. I'm happy to share the wealth! I've been fortunate these last 15 years! In 1989, I moved to Maryland from Florida in the hopes that I would be able to utilize my journalism degree in the Washington, D.C. area. Eva grew up in Bowie, Maryland and played a lot of the area Beltway clubs, i.e. Pearl’s in Annapolis, Maryland, Fleetwood’s in Alexandria, Virginia and Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., to name but a few. I was unfortunate in that I never saw her play live, and I discovered her about two years after she died. It was like finding a lottery ticket with winning numbers on it, only the numbers were for the previous week. Or, as Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times and the worst of times...” That's what it feels like when you discover an artist like Eva Cassidy, only too late to have the good fortune to ever be able to see her perform live.
I came to learn of Eva, when a friend told me about hearing a version of “Over the Rainbow” that was so bone-tingling that it would have made Judy Garland weep. Intrigued, I inquired more about it and learned that the song was on a recently released CD called Songbird. It was early summer of 1998 when I bought that CD, and I will never forget the night I listened to it and heard Eva’s voice for the first time:
My mother had gone down to Virginia to stay with my grandmother, who was having health problems, for about a week, and my husband and I had gone over to spend the evening with my father. After supper, they had commandeered the television to watch a baseball game. It was no sweat for me. I had my new CD, and I was interested in listening to it. I was more than psyched to see that it had been named for Christine McVie’s song of the same name, “Songbird” which has always been a favorite of mine. I took my father’s small boom-box cd player out onto the back patio with a candle and a glass of iced tea and settled in as night descended, and I prepared to hear Eva Cassidy’s voice for the first time – something I’d heard a lot about. To answer your question, yes. I had purchased the CD without having heard the voice, because my friend told me if I didn’t care for it, that she would buy it from me. I had nothing to lose. Also, I loved the songs that were on it — a few I’d not heard before, but most of them I knew and loved. I also trusted this friend’s advice, and if she said I was going to be blown away, I knew I was going to be in for a treat.
I will say that I cheated and skipped straight to Songbird first.
Words cannot adequately express nor describe what I felt when I first heard her sing “For you, there’ll be no more crying...For you, the sun will be shining...Cuz I feel that when I’m with you, it’s alright. I know it’s right.” I shivered; I gulped and the hair on the back of my neck stood at full attention — in that order. I think my mouth fell open in disbelief over what I was hearing, and I reached for the CD jacket and candle. This woman’s voice was incredible, and I wanted to know more about her! I opened it and pulled out the liner notes and began to glance through them as I listened to the awesomeness that was generating out of that small box. My heart caught when I read, “terminal cancer.” What? I didn’t think I’d read correctly, so I went back and re-read it again. I had not read it wrong. It clearly stated: “the next month, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.” I stopped the music, and sat for a minute staring out at the woods behind my parents house as I tried to digest that information. Cancer. Terminal Cancer. I looked at her cover photograph again. She was young — lovely, with golden blonde hair to match her golden voice. She looked to be my age. [I would find out that she had been six months older than me.] I went to the beginning of the liner notes and began to read each sentence — every word.
The second paragraph delivered the devastating blow:
“...That’s when I learned that her first solo album, recorded live at the Washington club Blues Alley, had just come out locally – and that Cassidy, age thirty-three, was consumed with cancer [metastatic melanoma]. Only after her death on November 2 was she discovered by the community at large...”
I felt tears come.
"Damn!” I muttered.
I felt an odd combination of happiness and sorrow in that moment, because I’d just discovered something so wonderful only to learn that the wonderful something was no longer with us. Life. It can be cruel at times...she was only 33 years old. She had been MY age. It gave me pause. I listened to the remainder of the CD with a heavy heart, and each song I heard had a more profound meaning as I listened to it with the knowledge that the golden voice serenading me was, in actuality silenced. Each song brought new tears – fresh pain over the reality that this angelic voice had been stilled before it had even had a chance to truly soar. That’s how my husband found me: sitting on the back deck, listening to Eva Cassidy with tears streaming down my face.
“I wanted to see if you wanted coffee?” he asked, stepping out into the night and coming over to me, when he saw the tears. “What’s wrong?”
I sniffed and wiped at my eyes. “She’s dead.”
He looked at me funny. It had been a blunt telling.
“What?” he asked, not understanding.
I held up the CD cover.
“Eva,” I said flatly, looking up at him. “She’s dead. She died of cancer at 33 years old.”
Autumn Leaves was playing in the background, as we spoke.
He paused to listen, equally impressed by the voice emanating from the box.
“Wow!” he said as reaction to the voice, then offering this as reaction to what I’d just told him about her. “That’s really sad.”
“It sucks!” I grumbled.
“Yeah,” he agreed, not knowing what else to say? What else was there to say?
I sniffed and asked if he needed me for something? He told me he just wanted to see if I wanted coffee? I shook my head that I didn’t, but thanked him for checking.
"You okay?" he asked.
I shrugged and nodded, but I felt out of sorts.
He went back inside.
Then, I went back to listening to Eva.
I was struck by her range and her ability to own whatever song it was she sang. Most covers of songs are nice nods to the originator, but they don’t eclipse the standard. Eva’s interpretations, for me, were the exception. Every song that her vocal chords nurtured, before she gave them to the rest of us as a love offering was something akin to the blossoming of a rare, and beautiful flower, and it was nothing short of glorious. She tilled the words—notes of a song much the way I imagine she tilled plants and gardens, during the time she worked at a landscape nursery as her “day job” for several years.
There wasn’t anything she couldn’t sing. She was like Elvis that way. Pop, blues, jazz, gospel, folk — you name it, and she could sing it. Eva didn’t just sing it either. She mastered it. She had a gift for interpretation, and her style was singularly her own. I’ve never heard another artist who sounds anything remotely like Eva Cassidy.
It may sound odd to you, but I once owned three copies of Songbird. [I’ve since given one copy away to a friend.] I kept one at work; one in my car; and one at home. I always wanted to have her music near me. I also own every CD that has subsequently been released since Songbird and added its predecessors Live at Blues Alley as well as Eva By Heart to my collection. She is one of my “go to” artists — no matter my mood, I find myself going to her music a lot. Her voice has a calming–soothing affect. If I’ve had a bad day, it cheers me. If I’ve had a good day, it makes it better. If I’m down, it uplifts. If I’m sad, it consoles. If I’m happy, it broadens my smile further. It is a gift when a singer has the ability to be able to do that: regardless of the circumstance, the voice has the power to alter the mood and make it better. That was Eva Cassidy. She had that power; she was that gift.
We lost her too soon. There is no getting around that! And, I tend to agree with Mary Chapin-Carpenter when she said in her song My Heaven about Eva that there are, “More memories than my heart can hold, when Eva’s singing ‘Fields of Gold’.” Man, that is so true! Take a listen to it and see if we’re not right about that. I’ll take it one step further: after you listen to Eva Cassidy sing ANY thing, not only will you not be the same again, you’ll never quite look at that song in the same context ever again either. Ever.
I remember her today with gratitude~heartfelt thanksgiving~longing. What can I say? I am only human after all, and she is something that is now beyond this world. It doesn’t matter that I never met her. I know her by heart. What a beautiful one she had! The songs she loved and left us to enjoy as her legacy are a clear window into her heart, soul and spirit. What I see and feel and hear when I listen to her is beauty and grace.
That sums up Eva Cassidy in a nutshell.
She left in autumn.
That’s when I miss Eva most, I think...when autumn leaves start to fall...
I honestly can’t say that for her, I haven’t cried...because I have. It was a great loss...
I’m not the only one though.
...For most people, death has the final word, but that’s not the case this time! Not here.
Not for you, Eva. True to form, you eclipsed even death... ღ ღ
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