Eva Marie Cassidy (February 2, 1963 – November 2, 1996) was an American singer and musician. She was known for her interpretations of jazz, folk, and blues music, sung with a powerful, emotive soprano voice. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a 1996 live solo album titled Live at Blues Alley. Although she had been honored by the Washington Area Music Association, she was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C. area at the time of her death from melanoma at the age of 33 in 1996.
Two years after Cassidy's death, Mike Harding and Terry Wogan played her versions of "Fields of Gold" and "Over the Rainbow" on BBC Radio 2, bringing her music to the attention of British audiences. Following an overwhelming response, a camcorder recording of "Over the Rainbow", taken at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. by her friend Bryan McCulley, was shown on BBC Two's Top of the Pops 2. Shortly afterwards a compilation album, Songbird, climbed to the top of the UK Albums Chart, almost three years after its release. Chart success in the United Kingdom and Ireland led to increased recognition of Cassidy worldwide and her posthumously released recordings, including three number-one albums and one number-one single in the UK, have sold more than ten million copies. She has charted in the top 10 in Australia, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
Nine posthumous albums of her music have been released. The most recent, I Can Only Be Me, a collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra, was released in 2023 and charted at number 9 on the UK album chart.
Early life Cassidy was born on February 2, 1963, at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.,Burley et al. p. 13. and grew up in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and later Bowie, Maryland. She was the third of four children of Hugh Cassidy, a teacher, sculptor, musician, former army medic and world champion powerlifter of Irish and Scottish descent, and Barbara (née Kratzer), a German horticulturist from Bad Kreuznach.The Afterlife of Eva Cassidy (PDF) Dorian Lynske, Word Magazine, 2003. Retrieved on March 6, 2008.Burley et al. p.12. From an early age Cassidy displayed an interest in art and music. When she was nine, her father began teaching her to play the guitar and she played and sang at family gatherings.
At age 11, Cassidy began singing and playing guitar in a Washington-area band called Easy Street.Burley et al. pp. 54–56. The band performed in a variety of styles at weddings, corporate parties and pubs, although she was shy and struggled with performing in front of strangers. While a student at Bowie High School she sang with a local band called Stonehenge. During the summer of 1983, Cassidy sang and played guitar six days a week at the theme park Wild World. Her younger brother Dan, a fiddler, was also a member of this working band. She enrolled in art classes at Prince George's Community College, but dropped out.
Throughout the 1980s Cassidy worked with several other bands, including the techno-pop band Characters Without Names. During this period she also worked as a propagator at a plant nursery and as a furniture painter. In her free time she explored other artistic expressions, including painting, sculpting, and jewelry design.
Music career In 1986, Cassidy was asked by Stonehenge guitarist and high school friend David Lourim to lend her voice to his music project, Method Actor.Burley et al. p.64. This brought her to Black Pond Studios, where she met recording engineer and bassist Chris Biondo. Biondo helped her to find work as a session singer and introduced her to Al Dale, who became her manager. She sang back-ups for various acts, from go-go rhythm and blues band Experience Unlimited to rapper E-40. In 1990 Biondo and Cassidy, who were in a romantic relationship for a time, formed a five-piece group, the Eva Cassidy Band, with Lenny Williams, Keith Grimes and Raice McLeod, and began to perform frequently in the Washington, D.C. area.
In 1992, Biondo played a tape of Cassidy's voice for Chuck Brown, the "Godfather of go-go". This resulted in a duet album, The Other Side, featuring performances of classic songs such as "Fever", "God Bless the Child" and what would later become Cassidy's signature song, "Over the Rainbow". The album was released and distributed in 1992 by Liaison Records, the label that also released Brown's go-go albums. Brown originally intended to record a duet with Cassidy for his next solo album, but this was postponed while Dale negotiated with other labels for a solo deal, and Cassidy was unwilling to narrow her stylistic focus to one genre, which would have hindered her chances of securing a deal. After talks broke down, the two recorded their own duet album and performed as a duo at the Columbia Arts Festival, opening for acts like Al Green and The Neville Brothers.
In 1993, Cassidy was honored by the Washington Area Music Association with a Wammie award in the Vocalist Jazz/Traditional category. Washington Area Music Association. Retrieved on March 6, 2008. The following year she was invited to perform at the event and sang "Over the Rainbow". The Washington Times review of the event called her performance "a show-stopper".Wammies honor area musicians. The Washington Times. November 9, 1994. She took home two Wammies that night, again for Vocalist Jazz/Traditional and also for Roots Rock/Traditional R&B. For a brief period that year, Cassidy signed a deal with Blue Note Records to pair with pop-jazz band Pieces of a Dream to release an album and tour. She sang two tracks on a mainly instrumental album but found it a musically unsatisfying experience.
After a possible contract with Apollo Records collapsed when the label went bankrupt, Biondo and Dale decided that Cassidy should release her own live album. On January 2–3, 1996, the material for Live at Blues Alley was recorded at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., but a technical glitch on the first night of recordingEva Cassidy: "Oh, Had I a Golden Thread" evacassidy.org. Retrieved on March 6, 2008. meant that only the second night's recording was usable, with 12 songs from it released on the resulting album. (The complete set of 31 songs recorded that night was eventually released 20 years later in 2015 as Nightbird.) She was unhappy with the way she sounded and was reluctant to release the album, but eventually relented on the condition that the studio track "Oh, Had I a Golden Thread", Cassidy's favorite song,According to the liner notes of the "Live at Blues Alley" CD:"* this wasn't in the live show but it is my favorite song..." be included in the release, and that they would start working on a follow-up studio album. Her apprehension appeared to have been unfounded; local reviewers and the public responded positively. The Washington Post commented that "she could sing anything, folk, blues, pop, jazz, R&B, gospel, and make it sound like it was the only music that mattered." The next studio album she worked on was released posthumously as Eva by Heart in 1997. In the liner notes of Eva by Heart, music critic Joel E. Siegel described Cassidy as "one of the greatest voices of her generation."
Cassidy was the first artist to record and release the song "It's Not The Presents Under The Tree (It's Your Presence Right Here Next To Me)," which was written by Billy Poore and Tex Rabinowitz with the intent of having it recorded by Linda Ronstadt, who rejected it. Cassidy's version of the song appears on the 2002 version of The Time-Life Treasury Of Christmas.Eva Cassidy’s ‘new’ Christmas song, Eva Cassidy Fan Club, December 14, 2019The Time-Life Treasury Of Christmas 2002 version, Discogs
Personal life Cassidy had a relationship with Chris Biondo, with whom she lived from 1991, but this ended before her cancer diagnosis.
Illness and death In 1993, Cassidy had a malignant mole removed from her back. Three years later, during a promotional event for the Live at Blues Alley album in July 1996, Cassidy noticed an ache in her hips, which she attributed to stiffness from painting murals while perched on a stepladder. The pain persisted and X-rays revealed a fracture. Further tests found that the cancer had spread (metastasized) to her bones, causing the fracture, and to her lungs. Her doctors estimated she had three to five months to live. Cassidy opted for aggressive treatment, but her health deteriorated rapidly.
On September 17, 1996, at a benefit concert for her at The Bayou, she made her final public appearance, closing the set with "What a Wonderful World" in front of an audience of family, friends, and fans. Additional chemotherapy was ineffective, and Cassidy died of melanoma on November 2, 1996, at her family's home in Bowie, Maryland. In accordance with her wishes, her body was cremated and the ashes were scattered on the lake shores of St. Mary's River Watershed Park, a nature reserve near Callaway, Maryland.
Posthumous recognition
After Cassidy's death, local folk singer Grace Griffith introduced the Blues Alley recording to Bill Straw from her label, Blix Street Records. Straw approached the Cassidy family to put together a new album. In 1998, a compilation of tracks from Cassidy's three released recordings was assembled into the CD Songbird. This CD lingered in relative obscurity for two years until being given airplay by BBC Radio 2, firstly by Paul Jones then by Mike Harding but most famously by Terry Wogan on his wide-reaching show Wake Up to Wogan, following recommendation by his producer Paul Walters. The album sold more than 100,000 copies in the following months. The New York Times spoke of her "silken soprano voice with a wide and seemingly effortless range, unerring pitch and a gift for phrasing that at times was heart-stoppingly eloquent."
Before Christmas of 2000, BBC's Top of the Pops 2 aired a video of Cassidy performing "Over the Rainbow", which resulted in Songbird climbing steadily up the UK charts over the next few weeks. ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald aired a feature on Cassidy just as the album topped the chart.Burley et al. p.155. Shot at Blues Alley by a friend with a camcorder the same night the album was recorded, the video became the most requested video ever shown on Top Of The Pops 2.Eva Cassidy's producer Chris Biondo talks to Toby Foster BBC Radio, July 2002. Retrieved on March 6, 2008. Alexis Petridis in The Guardian wrote, "There's an undeniable emotional appeal in hearing an artist who you know died in obscurity singing a song about hope and a mystical world beyond everyday life"."Albums from the crypt" The Guardian, November 1, 2002. Retrieved on August 21, 2014.
Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton were among her newfound fans. Jazz critic Ted Gioia writes, "You might be tempted to write off the 'Cassidy sensation' ... as a response to the sad story of the singer's abbreviated life rather than as a measure of her artistry. But don't be mistaken, Cassidy was a huge talent, whose obscurity during her lifetime was almost as much a tragedy as her early death." Songbird has since achieved significant chart success in Europe. It is certified six times platinum in the UK with 1,840,000 copies sold. Although relatively unknown in the US at first, the album was eventually certified gold.RIAA Gives Thanks For Strong Gold and Platinum Numbers In November RIAA News Room. Retrieved on March 6, 2008.