Home » Jazz Musicians » Eva Cassidy

Eva Cassidy

Eva Cassidy was the third of four children born to Hugh and Barbara Cassidy. From an early age, she displayed artistic and musical talent. When she was nine years old, her father taught her to play the guitar, and she began to play and sing at family gatherings. While a student at Bowie High School, she sang with a local band called Stonehenge, and received considerable praise. 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 pubs. 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. Throughout the 1980s, Cassidy worked with a number of other bands, including the soul and Motown-oriented band The Honeybees, and the techno-pop 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. 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. Best known as the "Godfather of Go-go", Brown 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. 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".

Read more

Tags

5
Album Review

Eva Cassidy: Nightbird

Read "Nightbird" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


The late singer/guitarist Eva Cassidy (1963-1996) was a possibility nature did not allow fulfilled. Barely started in what promised to be a successful career, Cassidy died at 33 from malignant melanoma, the same year her notable Live at Blues Alley (Eva Music) was recorded and released. The present Nightbird is the expansion and 20th Anniversary celebration of a life ended too soon and a recording promising so much. Recorded January 3, 1996, Cassidy would be gone by November...a streak of ...

172
Album Review

Eva Cassidy: Live at Blues Alley

Read "Live at Blues Alley" reviewed by Mathew Bahl


When Eva Cassidy died of cancer on November 2, 1996, few people outside of the Washington D.C. area had heard of this shy, young singer/guitarist. Five years later, a posthumously released collection of Ms. Cassidy’s work has sold well over one million copies in Europe and the United States. The reason for Ms. Cassidy’s appeal is simple. She had one of the most beautiful voices of her generation. Although a soprano, her singing had neither the stiff formality of a ...

Read more articles
161

Recording

"To Eva, with Love," New Eva Cassidy Tribute CD by Bay Area Vocal Duo Amikaeyla & Trelawny Rose, Set for National Release June 14 by Patois Records

"To Eva, with Love," New Eva Cassidy Tribute CD by Bay Area Vocal Duo Amikaeyla & Trelawny Rose, Set for National Release June 14 by Patois Records

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

For Bay Area jazz singers Amikaeyla and Trelawny Rose, the late Eva Cassidy is a potent source of inspiration, a shared passion, and a profound influence on their respective musical paths. They pay tribute to Cassidy on their new CD To Eva, With Love, which was recorded live at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, California, and will be released nationally by Wayne Wallace's Patois Records on June 14. In the works for three years, the CD has been a ...

180

Recording

Eva Cassidy - Simply Eva (2011)

Eva Cassidy - Simply Eva (2011)

Source: Something Else!

By S. Victor Aaron Eva Cassidy had only one record released in her lifetime, a live document at a local club in her native area of Washington, D.C. She only sang covers, most of them overly familiar, finding them within the realms of jazz, Tin Pan Alley, folk, pop, gospel and blues. Her insistence on not sticking with one style blocked opportunities to be signed by record labels. Her recordings were never highly produced affairs. And though there's about a ...

137

Performance / Tour

Bay Area Vocal Duo Amikaeyla & Trelawny Rose Plan Eva Cassidy Tribute Shows

Bay Area Vocal Duo Amikaeyla & Trelawny Rose Plan Eva Cassidy Tribute Shows

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

To celebrate the January 11 release of their Patois Records CD, To Eva, With Love, vocalists Amikaeyla and Trelawny Rose will be making two Bay Area appearances next month—Friday 1/21 at the Jazzschool in Berkeley, and Saturday 1/29 at Santa Cruz's Kuumbwa Jazz Center, where the new CD was recorded live. The stellar band heard on the CD will be making both January shows with Amikaeyla and Trelawny: trombonist Wayne Wallace, whose Patois label is releasing the new CD and ...

213

Interview

Eva Cassidy: The Voice and the Silence

Eva Cassidy: The Voice and the Silence

Source: Michael Ricci

I'm used to reading lists of the favorite musicians of young people and not knowing but - maybe - one out of every ten. As opposed to when I was twenty and could name every band in the free world, their members, their albums, who produced their albums, and what session musicians they used, now I know about ten current bands. Well, I'm fifty-seven. I'm not supposed to know this stuff. So, I've adopted a fine Irish smile and a ...

323

Recording

First Eva Cassidy Compilation in Five Years

First Eva Cassidy Compilation in Five Years

Source: W3 Public Relations

Blix Street Records adds to its series of albums by the late Eva Cassidy with the August 26 release of Somewhere, a collection of 12 previously unissued performances from the acclaimed Washington, D.C.-based singer. Among the program's highlights are two songs co-written by Cassidy, as well as impressive covers of material popularized by Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson and Bobby “Blue" Bland. Somewhere comprises recordings Cassidy made, in various venues and studios, between 1987 and 1996 (the ...

She could sing anything . . . and make it sound like it was the only music that mattered." -- Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, Nov. 17, 1996 "A voice as powerful and soulful as any in popular music." -- Associated Press "One of the best voices to have emerged from the U.S. in years." -- The Australian “Eva Cassidy’s is the most remarkable posthumous career trajectory in pop music history.” -- London Daily Telegraph - 8/16/03

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Nightbird

Audiophile Records
2016

buy

The Best Of Eva...

Didgeridoo Records
2012

buy

Simply Eva

Didgeridoo Records
2011

buy

Somewhere

Didgeridoo Records
2008

buy

Wonderful World

Didgeridoo Records
2004

buy

American Tune

Didgeridoo Records
2003

buy

Videos

Similar

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.