The Songbird who couldn’t be silenced by death
Twenty years ago Eva Cassidy soared to posthumous fame... with a little help from Terry Wogan. And her spirit still lives on in her music, say her loved ones
SHE DIED in obscurity, known only in the local bars and clubs where she played in Washington, DC. Her one album disappeared without trace, and she seemed destined to be soon forgotten. But 20 years ago this week Eva Cassidy’s album Songbird reached No 1 on the UK charts, more than four years after her death.
She found fame with her original interpretations of such classics as Fields Of Gold, Over The Rainbow, and Autumn Leaves.
“It’s extremely rare for an unknown artist to find fame after their death,” her father, Hugh Cassidy, 85, of Shady Side, Maryland, told the Daily Express this week.
“But she’s been able to live on through her music. She was a song stylist who interpreted other people’s music in her own way, perhaps better than most singers on the planet.”
Pitch-perfect with heartbreakingly eloquent phrasing, her melancholy silken soprano went on to spend six months in Britain’s Top Ten album chart, became the best-selling album of 2001, and went platinum six times.
Yet Cassidy’s extraordinary story did not end two decades ago. She has since racked up an additional nine UK gold albums, a feat she shares with the likes of Madonna, Kate Bush and Kylie Minogue.
She has sold more than 10 million albums and had more than 1.2 billion streams of her songs worldwide. Two more are poised for release later this year.
Not too shabby for a singer who could not afford to give up her day job working in a garden nursery, and who died of melanoma at the age of 33 in November 1996.
“Her success since her death is insane,” says her former pianist Lenny Williams, aged 59. “She wasn’t a household name. Even in the local scene they didn’t think much of Eva. She was a singer’s singer.”
IN AN era when Celine Dion was belting out soaring ballads, Cassidy sang soulful tunes with acoustic guitar competing against the raucous chatter and noise of small clubs.
Her bass guitarist and former boyfriend, Chris Biondo, recalls one gig: “We played and we actually emptied the room. People started leaving. They paid us to go home early.”
Says her father: “Eva would be surprised at all the attention she’s received. She disliked praise, and felt undeserving. She was a perfectionist, and her own harshest critic.
“If you’d told her she had earned 10 UK gold albums she’d say, ‘Aw, shucks.’ She never saw how good she was.”
Adds Lenny Williams: “Eva was an introvert, nervous on stage and uncomfortable before an audience. But her voice was incredible, with perfect pitch. She performed songs with an authenticity and control like few others, reinventing classic tunes and making them her own. Her voice conveyed deep emotions, and her death made it even more poignant.”
The blonde singer had rejected record deals from four labels, because they wanted her to focus solely on making an R&B album, or a country music album.
“Eva was unwilling to compromise to be successful,” says Williams.
“She liked singing all genres – jazz, soul, folk, rock, country, gospel – and refused to be pigeonholed. She wanted to be true to herself, and wouldn’t sell out for the sake of a record deal.” Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood, who owned a local club where Cassidy sometimes performed, urged
her: “Play their game, just to get through the door.” But she hit back: “I just want someone to get me.”
The third of four children of a schoolteacher and horticulturist, Cassidy worked full time in a floral nursery to support her singing career in Washington, DC.
Doctors removed a cancerous mole from her back in 1993, but a couple of years later the cancer had returned, spreading throughout her body. She was given months to live. “She hadn’t gone to get it checked out as often as she should – youth and ignorance,” says Williams. Her father recalls: “She knew she was dying, and seemed at peace. She was very spiritual, and always believed in an after-life.”
Cassidy issued one self-recorded album while alive, which she sold from the boot of her car, and which disappeared with barely a trace.
“I resigned myself to the fact she’d be someone musicians knew, but the public would never know,” says Williams.
But in late 1996, as Eva lay dying of cancer, nauseous and bald from chemotherapy, Blix Street Records chief Bill Straw received a tape of Cassidy singing, and was transfixed. “She was the best singer I’d ever heard,” says
Straw, 81, today.
“I was grief-stricken.
I knew she’d be famous, and probably wouldn’t live to enjoy it.”
Cassidy died weeks later, on November 2, 1996, and the following year Straw made a deal with her parents to release a compilation album of her music.
“People in the industry thought I was crazy,” recalls Straw. “They said, ‘How are you going to promote a dead singer who can’t tour, can’t do radio interviews or appear on TV?’”
The album Songbird was released in May 1998, comprising demo recordings Cassidy had made to win club gigs, but sales were sluggish, and it seemed destined to fade away as the naysayers had predicted. But in Britain almost three years later – four years after her death – Terry Wogan discovered her recording of Judy Garland’s classic Over The Rainbow, and played it on his BBC Radio 2 show. “The switchboard
‘We would give up all her success in a second if we could have her back for just one day’
was jammed with people wanting to know who was singing, and requesting it again the next day,” says Straw. “It became a sensation. Demand grew, and Songbird rose up the UK charts.”
Twenty years ago this week Songbird summited the album chart, pushing Dido’s hit No Angel off the top spot. “I was shocked when she went to No 1,” says Williams. “Her band knew she was great, but we didn’t expect the rest of the world to get it.”
CASSIDY had left a small collection of recordings from live shows and studio demos which went on to fill nine more hit albums, with two more coming later this year: a remastered version of Live at Blues Alley, and a Western swing album Walking After Midnight.
A documentary came out in January, there is a feature film about her life in development, and a Broadway musical in the works.
Cassidy’s recording of Songbird played during a pivotal scene in 2003’s Love Actually, and her music has appeared in countless films,TV shows and commercials.
Blue Note Records president Bruce Lundvall confessed he made “a very bad mistake” not signing Cassidy while she was alive. “Had she lived, I think she’d be an even bigger star than she is today,” says Williams. “Her talent would have come through.”
Record boss Straw agrees: “If she’d lived the sky would have been the limit. She’s had greater success after her death than most singers have while they’re alive. It’s her absolute authenticity, the soul in her voice, that rings true.”
Eva’s mother Barbara Cassidy, 81, tells me: “We’re very proud of her. She got the recognition she deserved. She had the voice of an angel, and left so many amazing songs.
“It’s wonderful that Eva has seen such success since her passing. But we would give up all her success in a second if we could have her back for just one day.”