| Eva's young life was cut short
on November 2, 1996, by cancer.Many are familiar with Eva Cassidy the
singer, but may be unaware of Eva's earlier passion for art.She began
scribbling and coloring daily by age three.Even
then, her stick drawings were advanced for a child.Eva was quite taken with the subtle shades of light and
shadow.Most of her work concerned nature, particularly trees, water,
clouds, and faces.Much of
her skill came about from obeying the urge to forever doodle and sketch
(most often in school).It was clear early on that music and art were her two
passions.And that included beadwork, clay figures, and film animation.EVA CASSIDY WEB SITE
Albums, articles, photos, interviews, and more
Celebrating its 9th anniversary in 2008!Welcome to the Eva Cassidy Web Site, a resource for
those seeking information about the late singer Eva Cassidy.For some fans, the pleasure of listening
is enough.Others want to know more: "Who was this
remarkable singer?Nor is it the "official web site" about Eva Cassidy; Eva herself is not here to award that distinction to any web site.Articles about Eva Cassidy and reviews of her recordings, from newspapers and magazines.Also, a trio of tough trivia quizzes for Eva Cassidy experts!View and contribute to the EVA CASSIDY GUESTBOOK!Occasionally Eva's friends and musical colleagues share their memories too.Some of the members of the Eva Cassidy Band have told me that they still read the guestbook every day.Support the hardworking musicians in your area by attending live performances.And if they're selling CDs and tapes from their guitar cases, as Eva once did, support their talents and efforts that way too.As someone once wrote in the Guestbook, "There will never be another Eva Cassidy, but there will be someone else."Please do not copy any of the images on this site.The Washington Post, Nov.Bruce Lundvall still shakes his head over Eva Cassidy.None made a
first impression like this unknown singer from Bowie."Eva Cassidy had the most extraordinary and singular voice I had heard in a
very, very long time," he says."It was distinctive not only because of its
power but because of its timbre when she sang quietly."The first time I ever heard her was in my office.Amazing Grace' and I was just nailed to the wall.She was, for sure, a diamond, no longer in the rough but
not yet in the proper setting that would showcase a voice so pure, so strong,
so passionate that it should have found a home just about anywhere.Cassidy didn't have any concept of target audiences or musical
distinctions.Clubs shy away from booking a voice like that.The second, "Live at Blues Alley," came out a month before she
learned she had cancer.All that helps explain why Eva Cassidy is not a familiar name, even here in
her home town.She was a secret slowly exposed by word of mouth from those who
stumbled into her world and emerged forever fans.It explains why so many
musicians sought Eva Cassidy out.Everybody felt like she was a part of their
mix.She was neither blessed nor burdened with the
aggressiveness and ambition that fuel so many singers and musicians.But
there was a spiritual solidity about Cassidy.She was determined, focused,
strong.Toward the end of July, Eva Cassidy started showing up for gigs with a
cane.Hip replacement
surgery was set for Aug.All of a sudden, she was being told that she had three months to live."Eva fought as hard as she did
because she wanted to ride her bike again, to go out and spend Sundays with
her mother.Her mother, Barbara Cassidy, says Eva "was a very private person, with a
sense of vulnerability about her when she sang.When Chris Biondo first met Eva Cassidy, she was just a friend of someone
recording in his home studio in Bowie."He told me he was bringing over a
really good singer.When Eva finally came in and sang, I
knew my friend wasn't kidding."Biondo's recording studio would ultimately be a bridge to a number of
musical opportunities that Cassidy would never have sought out.It was there
that she met Al Dale, a National Park Service official who would become her
manager.Is that Eva Cassidy?"She had never done any of that, just some
singing around the house with her family and doing little gigs.She talked
about how she enjoyed doing backup vocals and liked all kinds of music.Why would
anybody want to hear me?She came from a musical family.Her father, Hugh Cassidy, is a retired
schoolteacher who played acoustic bass for many years."It
strained her voice because kids play so loud and the singer has to screech to
get above them," says Hugh Cassidy."Her voice projected her feelings, and I
could feel everything she was singing.It's a devastating blow to lose her.I'd been knowing her all her life."Brown had
long wanted to cut an album reflecting his passion for jazz and blues, but, he
admits, "I never had the nerve to do it by myself.When I first heard her voice, I thought about Louis
Armstrong and Peggy Lee.What a combination that was way back in the '40s and
nobody'd done it since!Cassidy's singing with Brown, says her friend Jackie Fletcher, was "simple
and clear and gorgeous, the quiet crystal clear ballad interspersed with
soulful blues tunes."She was scared to play in front of a lot of people," Biondo says, "though
she became more comfortable when she realized her singing really moved
people."Eva didn't have any of those traits.She was just happy doing what she did.And the way she did harmonies is unbelievable.When she'd come in," Scarfo says, "I swear, it was like
the principal walking into a class, I've never seen them so respectful and
well behaved.According to Biondo, Cassidy's biggest problem with prospective labels was
that when they asked her to show them what direction she wanted to go in, she
would record three or four songs."And, inevitably, one would be a gospel
song, one a jazz standard, one a folk song, or some obscure Celtic song that
Eva would change and arrange in ways that made it not resemble anything like
it was when it was originally invented.Because she had no insurance,
a benefit was scheduled at the Bayou, with dozens of bands and individual
musicians volunteering their services."Eva cared enough about it to try to get herself pumped up to get there,"
Dale says.This is like my big
birthday party.It may have been the one time in her life that she came to
terms with the idea that people really do like her and think that she's a
terrific talent.It filled her to know people appreciated and loved her."Late that evening, Cassidy slowly moved down the Bayou stage steps with her
walker and approached the microphone.And then, with a fragile beauty that belied her pain, she sang "What a
Wonderful World," a vision of moments and places and people that will never
again seem quite as wonderful as they were that night.Eva Cassidy's eyes may have been the only dry ones in the Bayou at that
moment."But she came home and threw up that night, she was in a lot of pain.Hours later, Cassidy was back at Johns Hopkins for chemo.She started sliding downhill that
next morning.The Bayou would be Cassidy's last public performance.The little bit of
singing she did after that was from her bed.My Heart's in the
Highlands.And, typically, it was Eva
Cassidy who preempted others' sorrow."She never
even had a tear in her eye.Well, Eva, how are you doing?Barbara Cassidy remembers that earlier this year, Eva visited relatives in
Nova Scotia and sat on some rocks watching meteors go by all night long.She loved different cloud formations, the way the
sun would feel to her through the breeze, flowers.In 1993, Eva Cassidy tried to record a song called "I Know You by Heart."The project was sidetracked.Cause I know you by heart .Then, the song's sound may well bring
tears to strangers' eyes, but right now it's the silence that hurts those who
knew the singer.Reprinted by permission of the author.This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.Please improve this article if you can.November 2, 1996 in Bowie, Maryland) was an American vocalist described by the British newspaper The Guardian as "one of the greatest voices of her generation."Cassidy remained virtually unknown outside of her native Washington, DC, when she died of melanoma (which had spread to her bones) in 1996.Biography
2 Accompaniment
3 Posthumous recognition and popularity
3.Biography
Eva Cassidy was the third of four children born to Hugh and Barbara Cassidy.When she was nine years old, her father taught her to play the guitar, and she began to play and sing at family gatherings.During the summer of 1983, Cassidy sang and played guitar, six days per week, at Wild World, in Maryland.Her brother Dan was also a member of this working 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 Annapolis, Maryland.In 1986, she met (bassist and recording engineer) Chris Biondo, who encouraged her and helped her find work as a backup singer for various acts."Eva Cassidy Band", composed of Chris Biondo, Lenny Williams, Keith Grimes and Raice McLeod, and she began to perform frequently in the Washington area.Cassidy was unhappy with her singing on the album, because she had a bad cold on the night of the recording; she began recording a studio album which was eventually released as Eva by Heart posthumously in 1997.The pain persisted, and, a few weeks later, Cassidy was diagnosed with melanoma.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 Association.In 2001, her album reached number 1 in the UK charts after the BBC television show Top Of The Pops 2 aired a video of Eva performing Over The Rainbow at Blues Alley.The Songbird CD also achieved significant chart success throughout Europe and has achieved gold status in the United States.Since then, several CDs have been released: Time After Time (2000) and Imagine (2002) and "American Tune" (2003).The hardcover edition has since sold in excess of 100,000 copies.Eva Cassidy, written and narrated by Dave Marash and produced by Madhulika Sikka.Michelle's contribution to "Fields of Gold" was so significant that Cassidy's record label awarded Michelle a gold record for making "Fields of Gold" a household song in 2002.Later in the year Olympic Gold Medalist Kristi Yamaguchi skated to Eva's rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine."Eva's performance of "Kathy's Song" can be heard in the feature film Maid in Manhattan which was released in 2002 as well.Another film soundtrack to feature Eva's singing was 2002's The Man from Elysian Fields starring Mick Jagger and Andy Garcia.In the first season of Smallville at the end of the episode "Crush", Eva Cassidy's cover of Cyndi Lauper's song "Time After Time" is featured in a moving funeral scene.Georgian singer Katie Melua released her song "Faraway Voice", in memory of Cassidy.On Christmas Eve 2006 BBC1 aired a programme of "impossible duets" in which she duetted with Eva on Over The Rainbow.No other recording artist in popular music history has been able to match this posthumous success, including Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix.Eva's song Songbird was featured in the feature film Love Actually which was released in the autumn of 2003.Irish singer Chris De Burgh has stated in concert that his song "Songbird" from his album The Road to Freedom was written in honor of Eva Cassidy.In 2004, singer Mary Chapin Carpenter made poignant reference to Eva Cassidy in her song "My Heaven" on the album Between Here and Gone: "More memories than my heart can hold, when Eva's singing Fields of Gold."Olympic Gold Medalist Sarah Hughes skated to "Over the Rainbow" during the "Smuckers Stars on Ice" tour, and World Champion Kimmie Meissner, a teenager from Maryland, also chose "Over the Rainbow" at the exhibition gala following the World Championships.In 2006 Eva's voice was heard on another movie soundtrack when her "Over the Rainbow" opened the film Alpha Dog.In season 5 (2006) of the TV show American Idol, the runner up, Katharine McPhee, sang a song chosen by Simon Cowell.He chose Eva Cassidy's 1996 unique rendition of "Over the Rainbow" for McPhee.Cowell said that he was very happy for McPhee and, putting the fact that he chose the song aside, he thought it was the best performance of the competition to date.In 2006, on the The X Factor (UK), Leona Lewis sang Eva's version of Over the Rainbow.Simon Cowell commented saying, "That was the single best performance I have ever witnessed".In 2007, on the TV show America's Got Talent, Julienne Irwin sang Cassidy's rendition of "Over the Rainbow."In 2007, on the TV show 'So You Think You Can Dance (season 3)', a contemporary dance was choreographed to 'Fields of Gold'.UK Singles chart on December 16.Possibility of future film
In an nbc4.Kirsten Dunst or Emily Watson as suggested possible actresses who could play their daughter.It is being produced by Amy Redford (daughter of Robert Redford), Irwin Shpiro and Rick Singer.Quotes
"She could sing anything .Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, Nov.Blues Alley the same nights as the live album in January 1996.Eva Cassidy biopic in the works.Found
The document has moved here.Since I cannot sing, I paint.World, a local theme park.Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.Contact
If you have comments you think might be of interest to other visitors to this site, please post them to the forum.However, if your enquiry is concerned with the website, you should contact Henrik.Thanks
We are delighted to have Elaine Stonebraker's permission to use her lovely photograph of Eva on our welcome page.Thank you very much, Elaine.As most of you probably know, the photograph also graces the Songbird CD inlay.We are also grateful to Blix Street Records founder and CEO Bill Straw for giving his acceptance to our use of the image.Matt for his permission to incorporate his many tabs of Eva songs into the site and for his generous assistance in evaluating various 'third party' tabs.You will find the original versions of most of his tabs in the files section of the Yahoo Eva Cassidy newsgroup.Thank you very much indeed, Steve.My regards to you and Leila.Michael Ingram who mailed me lyrics for his song Baggage (see 'Stray songs').Jeff Muller, thank you so much for mailing me a corrected version of the lyrics to 'Maman Marie' ('Stray songs').Check out that guy's song writing!Many thanks to monsieur Sylvain Roca ('sroca' in the Yahoo Eva Cassidy group) for permission to use the tabs for ANS, IWIWASGA and TAT that he has uploaded to the group's file section.My attempts to contact former (?Yahoo Eva Cassidy group member 'kiwibird302' have so far met with no result.And thanks also to 'terrorvision_babe' for permission to use his chords for Anniversary Song.Many thanks to Dre from Holland for extra tabs for AL, OTR, S, TAT and TW.Marcin Zreda of Poland, thank you for supplying chords for PTMN (TAT).Stuart Lowe, New Zealand, thank you for letting me use your tab for IWBAB (TAT).Marta from Poland, I haven't gotten in touch with you yet, but I hope you do not mind I have used your tab for KS (TAT).Eva Cassidy songs we could lay our hands on, he suggested that we make the results of our labors available to other Eva fans.So it is fair to say that this website owes its existence to him.Cassidists and people who knew Eva: Mona Skobe, Laura Bligh, Paul Limbrick, Lynn (essseus of the Yahoo Eva Cassidy newsgroup), Steven Digman, David Christopher, Chris Arscott, and Eileen White, who has in turn on several occasions drawn on Chris Biondo, Chuck Brown, and Mary Ann Redmond.Chris Arscott kindly provided background on IWBAB (TAT).Thanks also to the members of the Yahoo Eva Cassidy group, especially 'martlet530' (Scott from Stone Mountain), 'closetcomposer' and 'essseus', for your many interesting and informative messages.Tom Goldfogle and Laura, tons of kudos to you for making my walls prettier!Copyright
Most of the songs Eva performed are under copyright.In some cases these web sites function as online outlets for the artists' recordings.We hope many of our visitors will avail themselves of the opportunity to order such records.ToDo
We need hardly say that we will endeavor to correct any errors to which you may alert us.Among these may be mentioned...Stray songs section
stating date of writing for each song where this can be established.Several further enhancements to the site are under consideration.Techie talk
This site was designed with the following standard monitor resolutions in mind: 1280x1024, 1152x864, 1024x768 and 800x600.Book Antiqua, Arial Narrow (83.Headings in Site notes section: as menus.Alternative font choices will soon be provided for lyrics and notes at 800x600.Use fewer keywords to find more results.If you want to specify which of your search terms should match the author's name and which should match the title, you should conduct an Advanced Search.View or change your orders in Your Account.Visit our Help department.After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session. |
