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Biography
While a student at Bowie High School, she did sing with a local band, called Stonehenge, and received considerable praise.[citation needed] At the age of eighteen, Cassidy began her professional career, singing and playing guitar in a Washington, D.C., area band, called Easy Street. This band performed in a variety of styles, at weddings, corporate parties, and smokey pubs. She worked with Easy Street on Christmas night in 1982, at a neighborhood pub in Bowie, Maryland. During the Summer of 1983, Cassidy sang and played guitar, six days per week, at the Wild World Theme Park, in Maryland. Her brother Dan was also a member of this working band.
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. In 1990, Biondo and 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. Brown, best known as the "Godfather of Go-go, 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", Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" and Cassidy's signature tune "Over the Rainbow". The album was released and distributed by Liaison Records, the label that also released Brown's Go-go albums. The duet CD attracted the attention of various record companies, but the offers all required Cassidy to pigeonhole herself within a single style (e.g., pop or jazz), something she adamantly refused to do.[citation needed] 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". [1] 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. During a promotional event for the Live at Blues Alley CD in July 1996, Cassidy noticed an ache in her hips, which she attributed to stiffness from painting murals. The pain persisted, and, a few weeks later, Cassidy was diagnosed with melanoma. By the time of her diagnosis, the cancer had spread throughout her body. Cassidy's health rapidly deteriorated, and her final performance was in September 1996, when, after using a walker to reach the stage, she sang "What a Wonderful World" in front of an audience of friends. Eva was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital. A constant stream of friends kept coming, bringing her fruit and flowers. She felt badly that these were going to waste, so she asked someone to bring in paper and crayons. Often she could not see her visitors because of the regimen she had, so this way she helped her visitors to express themselves to her. When one stepped off the elevator and saw the hallways lined with people sitting on the floor colouring, talking and getting to know each other. Eva had every picture hung on the big wall at the end of her bed so she could see them. When friends would visit later, they would find her bent over her pen, handwriting thank-you cards. She had very little energy and stamina to sit, but she used that time to thank people.[citation needed] 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. AccompanimentDuring the later part of Eva Cassidy's performing and recording career, she was accompanied by a core group of musicians: Posthumous recognition and popularityIn 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 Two by presenter Terry Wogan following recommendation by his producer Paul Walters. In 2001 the album reached #1 in the UK after the BBC television show Top Of The Pops 2 aired a video of Over The Rainbow to massive public reaction. Sting, the songwriter for "Fields of Gold", was reportedly moved to tears when he heard Cassidy's version of his song.[citation needed] 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). 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 (softcover, published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group USA) was released in late 2003 and included additional chapters. In March 2001, ABC's Nightline in the United States broadcast a well-received [2] short documentary about Eva Cassidy, written and narrated by Dave Marash and produced by Madhulika Sikka. The Nightline profile A similar broadcast occurred on ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald in Great Britain in May 2001. In 2002, figure skater Michelle Kwan skated to Eva's recording of "Fields of Gold" at the Winter Olympics gala, and later on tour during the northern summer of 2002. 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.[citation needed] 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. This version was used at the suggestion of the song's writer Paul Simon. Another film soundtrack to feature Eva's singing was 2002's The Man from Elysian Fields starring Mick Jagger and Andy Garcia. In 2003, Anglo/Georgian singer Katie Melua released her song "Faraway Voice", in memory of Cassidy. She has also performed Eva's arrangement of "Anniversary Song" in concert. On Christmas Eve 2006 BBC1 aired a programme of "impossible duets" in which she duetted with Eva on Over The Rainbow. 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. Eva's song Songbird was featured in the feature film Love Actually which was released in the fall 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. 2006 Eva's voice was heard on another movie soundtrack when her "Over the Rainbow" opened the film Alpha Dog. Possibility of future filmIn an nbc4.com interview, her parents mention the possibility of a future film:
Quotes
Discography
Videography
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