Music Legends - Eva Cassidy

Eva Marie Cassidy a true Songbird was born to a musical family in Washington in February 1963 the third of four children. She displayed musical talent at a very young age. She formed a band "Stonehenge while still at school.

She went through her musical career largely unknown on the world wide stage, only really known in her home City & State. In 1983 aged 20 she played six nights a week at "Wild World" in Maryland along with her brother Dan.

She was once had her voice describe by British Newspaper "The Guardian" as having the greatest voice of her generation. Her music was not limited to one particular style, her repertoire included anything from Pop, Folk, Jazz, Blues & Gospel.

Here she is doing the Blues classic "Stormy Monday" :-

Throughout the 1980s, Cassidy worked with a number of other bands, including the soul and Motown-oriented band The Honeybees, and the techno-pop band Characters Without Names, later called Method Actor.

During this period, Cassidy also worked as a propagator at a plant nursery and as a furniture painter in Maryland.

In 1990 Cassidy hired the so-called "Eva Cassidy Band", composed of Chris Biondo, Lenny Williams, Keith Grimes and Raice McLeod, and she began to perform frequently in the Washington area.

In 1992 Biondo played a tape of Cassidy's voice for Chuck Brown Best known as the "Godfather of Go-go", Brown is also a jazz and blues vocalist. This led to the first commercial recording of Cassidy, the duet album with Chuck Brown "The Other Side" which featured performances of classic songs such as "Fever", Billy Hollidays "God Bless the Child" and Cassidy's signature tune "Over the Rainbow".

In 1993 Eva Cassidy was first honored by the Washington area music community when she was awarded two "Wammie Awards" for "Female Vocalist Roots/Traditional R&B" and "Vocalist Jazz/Traditional." The next year she was chosen to perform for the awards ceremony.

In January 1996, Cassidy recorded the album "Live at Blues Alley", about which "The Washington Post" later commented that "she could sing anything and make it sound like the only music that mattered". Cassidy herself was reportably unhappy with her voice on the recording because she was suffering fom a cold at the time.

It was during the recording of this album that she noticed a pain in her hips, cancer was diagnosed which then spread extreamly quickly.

Eva Cassidy died on November 2, 1996, at the age of 33. She was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington Area Music Corporation.
According to her wishes, Cassidy’s body was cremated. Her ashes were sprinkled on the shores of St. Mary's Lake, a nature preserve near California, MD

In 1998 a compilation of tracks from Cassidy's three released recordings was assembled into the CD "Songbird", this CD lingered in obscurity for a few years until being given airplay on BBC Radio by presenter Terry Wogan. In 2001 the album reached number 1 in the UK charts after the BBC television show "Top of the Pops 2" aired a video of Eva performing. It became the most requested video ever shown of Top Of The Pops 2 despite the fact it was just a homemade video made by somebody watching Eva perform. The Songbird CD also achieved significant chart success throughout Europe and has achieved Gold status in the United States.
Since then, several other CDs have been released.

In 2001 a book entitled Songbird was released in the UK on the life and work of Cassidy, based on interviews with close family and associates. The hardcover edition has since sold in excess of 100,000 copies. A U.S. edition was released in late 2003 and included additional chapters.

Sting, the songwriter for "Fields of Gold", was reportedly moved to tears when he heard Cassidy's version of his song.

In March 2001, ABC's Nightline in the United States broadcast a well-received short documentary about Eva Cassidy, written and narrated by Dave Marash.

In 2003, American Tune became Eva's third consecutive #1 album in the UK. No other recording artist in popular music history has been able to match this posthumous success, including Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix.

In 2006, on the THE X Factor Leona Lewis sang Eva's version of "Over the Rainbow". Simon Cowell commented saying, "That was the single best performance I have ever witnessed".

RIP EVA a true voice of an Angel.