VIENNA, Va. — February 1, 2011- It sounds a little like hyperbole, but in 1996, the world lost a truly gifted vocal talent in Eva Cassidy.
Eva Cassidy was born and raised in the greater Washington DC area. She toiled around the DC music scene for a few years until the early ‘90s, when her producer, Chris Biondo (who also produced the majority of this album), passed along a demo of her singing to legendary funk and go-go musician, Chuck Brown, and the duet album The Other Side soon followed in 1992. The period after The Other Side is mostly mired with contract negotiations, and she bounced around DC music scene again, only this time she was garnering more attention for dynamic singing performances.
Eva Cassidy - Simply Eva
In 1996, she recorded Live at Blues Alley, and released it later that year independently. The album was uniformly well-received and praised, albeit locally, for the most part. Unfortunately, before she could really capitalize on the success of the live album, Cassidy was diagnosed with melanoma and soon passed away in November of 1996.
Since her death, Cassidy’s recordings have seen quite a surprising uptick. Her singing finally found a record label, and she’s gained significantly large critical and mass appeal. In 2000, she became popular in the UK, where her album, Songbird, reached number 1 on the charts and went platinum. She has seen almost unparalleled success in that time, releasing ten albums posthumously, and being universally praised by both critics and the masses.
This brings us to the album Simply Eva, which is the tenth album released posthumously featuring Eva Cassidy as solo artist. There couldn’t be a more suitable title for the album. All the listener is given on this album is Eva Cassidy’s voice and her acoustic guitar. While that doesn’t sound like much, it’s more than enough. It’s hard to ignore the hyperbole surrounding the praise of Cassidy’s voice, but at the same time, it’s easy to see where that praise is coming from, and just how stunning her voice is. At its core, this album presents Cassidy at her most raw and unencumbered. It wouldn’t be fair to say that a band would ever overshadow her singing (and inaccurate), but this album really does showcase just how talented she was.
She’s often been hailed by most blues critics, but her voice doesn’t really have the grit that’s attached to most blues singers. She has the clean sheen of a soul singer instead, but neither interpretation detracts from just how powerful and emotional her singing is. This album includes some her most popular interpretations including “Songbird,” “Time After Time,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” and the immensely popular “Over the Rainbow.”
It’s understandable why “Over the Rainbow” has become more or less Cassidy’s defining song, as it stands out and overpowers the other selected songs here. It’s not to say that the other songs aren’t strong (because they are), but “Over the Rainbow” is quite quirky and jarring, if the original version of the song is familiar. She emphasizes different parts of the chorus that in the end makes the song all her own, unlike any of the other songs on the album.
Still, Cassidy provides a subtle individual touch to each of the songs that makes them refreshing and worth listening to. Some of the other highlights include a soft and haunting variation of Paul Simon’s “Kathy’s Song” and a sorrowful rendition of “Autumn Leaves.”
The only thing that really detracts from the album is that a majority of the album has been collected elsewhere in Eva Cassidy’s discography, but it still might be worth it for her fans, just to hear the nakedness of her voice. For someone just introduced to Eva Cassidy though, it’s an excellent example of just want a wonderful and dynamic singer she was, and well worth the emotional investment.
Read more of Steve's work in Riffs at the Washington Times Communities.
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