Eva Cassidy was born in Maryland in 1963 and worked the Washington, D.C. club circuit in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Her takes on classics like “People Get Ready” (above) and “Fields of Gold” blew away audiences and put her on the local map, and her one-of-a-kind voice led to work with Chuck Brown and others.
She faced several musical disappointments in her too-short career — most notably the bankruptcy of Apollo Records just as a record contract seemed on the horizon — and she died of melanoma in 1996. In 2000, a British DJ stumbled across two of her tracks and played them on BBC radio, to huge response from his audience. Since then, her songs have held Top 10 spots in Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, along with three #1 tracks in the U.K., and her take on “Over the Rainbow” became her signature across Europe and elsewhere. Of the 11 records she contributed to, 9 were released after her death.
And for some reason I can’t wrap my head around, hardly anyone I know has ever heard of her.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Nat // Jan 6, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I agree. Love it!
2 Asher Vijay // Jan 14, 2009 at 10:36 pm
She has a fantastic way of creating an arc with her singing…
Somehow, the fact that she remains relatively unknown doesn’t surprise me. There’s an enormous amount of Canadian music that remains completely unknown South of the border, but because it remains unknown there, it remains largely unknown here.
Additionally, it reminds me of Bach, of whom we would be oblivious had Mendelssohn not started the Bach revival in 1829, nearly 80 years after Bach’s death.
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