"If you love music - the kind of music that will enrich your life, then you have to love the music of Eva Cassidy." - Kevin Howlett
Eva Cassidy was born on February 2nd, 1963. Growing up in a musical family on the outskirts of Washington, DC, she sang as a small child and later learned to play the guitar. Even then as a child she had an amazing gift for perfect harmony, and on family outings, she would sing, harmonising perfectly with the music from the car radio. She endured school, preferring her own company and, whenever possible, being involved with music and painting.
A deeply though unconventionally spiritual person, Eva viewed her talent as a gift and an obligation. Clearly, she inherited a predisposition for creative expression from her parents. Her father, Hugh, is a bassist, cellist, and sculptor. Her mother, Barbara, comes from a family of craftsmen and decorators. When Eva began drawing at 2 and 1/2, her sensitivity to form and color were immediately apparent. Hugh taught her the rudiments of guitar technique and introduced her to folk music. At the age of 9, she became serious about music, singing and practicing guitar hour after hour.
She loved to immerse herself in her parents' record collection, which ranged from Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong to Buffy Sainte-Marie. She had also shown such innate creativity that the family home was filled with her hand-crafted jewelry, pottery and furniture.
The first time Eva's mother saw this painting, she thought, "this is the essence of Eva!" and that's been the title ever since. The painting was done in the early 80's when Eva was in her early twenties. The figure in the painting is surrounded by things Eva loved -- water, clouds, and the old cedars (her favorite trees).
Eva was a complex person, painfully shy, vulnerable to criticism and subject to seasonal depressions, yet opinionated and stubborn, unyielding in her personal values and artistic principles. She loved solitude, bicycling, movies and Cheetos, hated high school, dresses, aggressive drivers and the exploitation of women in advertising and television. She was obsessive about her art projects, painting, drawing, sculpting, designing jewellery, decorating furniture and clock faces. Extremely self-conscious, she had little interest in pursuing a professional career in art or music, preferring to surround herself with supportive friends who served as her advocates. She had few possessions and modest goals, sometimes she spoke of wanting to live in a cottage by the ocean, and no sense of money. She didn't have a checking account until she was 30, and worried that material success would threaten her identity. Battling the melanoma that took her life at 33, she told her mother "All I want to do when I get well is sing and travel around with my music".
In 1986, she showed up at Chris Biondo's recording studio in Maryland to sing backup for a friends band. "It was the middle of winter," Biondo remembers. "She was so insecure, I had to go out to the parking lot and coax her to come inside." He was impressed with her singing and invited her to return so that he could record her as a soloist. Just hearing her voice made me feel happy."
Soon enough, she attracted a manager, Al Dale. "I heard this wonderful, soulful voice but couldn't see the singer from where I was sitting in the booth. When the musicians took a break, I was expecting a black woman, but instead out came this blonde, blue-eyed white lady. I told her how much I loved her singing and gradually we became friends. When I offered to help her with her career, she seemed astonished. The first thing she said was 'Why would anyone want to pay to hear me sing?' She had no idea how great she was."
Encouraged by Biondo and Dale, she formed the Eva Cassidy Band in the spring of 1990. At first, she felt uncomfortable on-stage, keeping her eyes downcast to avoid making contact with the audience. But as she came to realize how much people enjoyed her music, she gradually evolved into a more confident, outgoing performer.
She was attracting a growing crowd of appreciative fans who followed her to various small clubs, and she enjoyed enough time to indulge her deep love of nature. Almost every Sunday was spent walking or bicycling with her mother in the countryside.
(artwork by Eva Cassidy)
After a recording session, Biondo played Eva's tapes for Go-Go godfather Chuck Brown, who remained in the studio until dawn listening to her voice. "The first four or five notes and I knew this lady really had something," Brown recalls. "She was singing Stormy Monday' and God Bless The Child,' songs I grew up with. She sounded so sweet and mellow, and had so much soul and feeling. I've earned my living playing R&B and rock and roll, but never considered myself a jazz or blues performer. When Eva agreed to make an album with me, she gave me the inspiration and confidence to try something I used to lie in my bed dreaming about but was always afraid to do. Eva opened a lot of doors for me. Performing with her was the most exciting part of my career. She will always be in my heart."
Dale approached record labels to sign Eva as a solo artist, but her eclectic repertoire, jazz, blues, folk, standards, gospel, pop, confused short-sighted a&r directors. "Eva was a pure artist," Dale observes. "She chose songs that moved her, that allowed her to express her feelings. Record companies wanted to dictate her material, to fit her into a certain mold so they could target a specific market. But she wouldn't go along with that. She refused to compromise her music to make it more commercial."
Although record companies weren't supportive of her music career, encouragement flooded in from elsewhere. Dale recalls, "black people would hear her and say, 'damn, she can sing!'". Musicians loved her too, notably Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, who sat in with her on drums whenever she played at his club in Virginia. She went on to record 'Songbird', a ballad of an all-healing love writted by Fleetwood's partner Christine McVie.
In 1996, she made 'Live at Blues Alley' - a showcase of her eclecticism.
Standing on-stage with her guitar, too nervous to look her audience in the eye, she drew them into every corner of her vast musical world. From that album comes a pair of elegaic ballads - 'Autumn Leaves' and Sting's 'Fields of Gold' in which nature, her great refuge, engulfs her with memories of loved ones.
During the release of the album, Eva walked with a cane, explaining that her hip was sore. At the time she was working for a friend in Annapolis on murals in schools cafeterias, and she put the soreness down to too much ladder work. A month later, she was diagnosed with advanced melanoma. She was told that she had three to five months to live.
(artwork by Eva Cassidy)
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; it was a wonderful scene to behold. 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.
Eva Cassidy died on November 2nd, 1996. She was only 33 years old.
Her memory is immortalised through the precious gifts she left behind. Her paintings hang throughout her parents' home, while her recordings ensure that her beautiful soulful voice will live on forever.
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