|
|
Eva CassidyAlbums ReviewedLive At Blues Alley (1996)Songbird (1998) Time After Time (2000) American Tune (2003) Live At Blues Alley(1996)It's a little known fact that Eva Cassidy started her musical career as Jon Anderson in a Yes covers band. The tragic aspects of Cassidy's career are better known; markedly shy, she never was never more than a cult figure around the Washington area during her lifetime. After her tragically early death from melanoma at the age of 33 in 1996, Cassidy has become a relatively well known figure. While I'd normally run a mile from interpretative singers (Emmylou Harris is the only other I really like), Cassidy really was something special. A diminutive blonde, she was able to generate the power of a woman four times her weight while retaining an amazing purity of voice. Combined with her ability to take songs from a variety of sources and make them her own, Cassidy's well worth hearing despite her popularity in the adult contemporary market. You have to give her credit for her wide-ranging taste, drawing songs from the lexicons of jazz, folk, blues, and pop. Even when she made an apparent lapse of taste in covering songs that the musical elite would regard as terminally uncool, such as Louis Armstrong's 'What A Wonderful World' or Sting's 'Fields of Gold' on this album, she had the natural talent and class to lift them above the shadow of their overplayed original versions. It's all so natural and uncontrived; Cassidy playing her favourite songs in her own inimitable style. Live At Blues Alley was the only album that Cassidy released during her lifetime, and she was reportedly unhappy with the results; she had a cold, and her voice is less ethereal than normal. But backed by a swinging band, providing fuller arrangements than her studio recordings, this set focuses on more upbeat songs like 'Cheek to Cheek' and 'Blue Skies', so that her huskiness isn't much of an impediment. Despite the fact that she used to be Jon Anderson, her complete lack of pretension is disarming; she's enthusiastic playing in front of a small crowd, and her stage chatter is intimate and humble. Stunning reinventions include gentle takes on 'Fields of Gold' and 'What A Wonderful World', that reveal that they're worthy songs when they're not delivered by a man with an ego the size of Connecticut or constantly used in television advertising. I'm somewhat of a jazz ignoramus (you'll notice that throughout this page I talk mostly about her pop covers, and I'd probably have a harder time sitting through this album if she didn't chuck in some songs that I know), so I have no idea what standards 'Fine And Mellow' and 'Tall Trees in Georgia' were like originally, but here they sound perfectly palatable. Her take on 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters' is more explicitly emotive than Garfunkel's refined take on the original, although her 'Take Me To The River' lacks the drugged-out minimalism of the Talking Heads' definitive version. Curtis Mayfield's 'People Get Ready' is an excellent choice for Cassidy's ouevre; soulful with a funky edge. For some unknown reason, Cassidy tacked a studio version of 'Oh, Had I A Golden Thread'; with a low-key treatment and an elaborate organ solo, it sticks out like a sore thumb. As the only album that Cassidy assembled, Live At Blues Alley is an important document of her career; because Cassidy studio versions of these songs don't exist, it's pretty much essential for her fans. Her band is tight and accomplished, and there are few live albums that occupy such a place of importance in an artist's catalogue. 
Songbird(1998)Because Cassidy wasn't around to keep the money men in line, her discography is somewhat confusing; Songbird is a compilation drawn from the album Eva By Heart and four songs from Live At Blues Alley with the applause edited out. Previously undiscovered Cassidy recordings have surfaced since this compilation was made, rendering it somewhat superfluous as a definitive collection, but since she wasn't around to sequence any of her albums, it flows just as nicely as any of the others. It's more of the genre hopping exercise of Live At Blues Alley, with a smoother sound; she never really altered her approach throughout her career, but it's always interesting to hear how she tackles each individual song. What might be overlooked about Cassidy is that it wasn't just her voice that created her unique interpretations of songs; she was also an accomplished musician, and her guitar picking was an important part of her song interpretation. 'Fields of Gold', 'People Get Ready' and 'Autumn Leaves', all reappear from Live At Blues Alley. Among the remaining tracks, 'Songbird' is a relatively straightforward take on the piano ballad from Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, while 'Time Is A Healer' and 'Wade Into Water' are nice excursions into gospel. The most revelatory song on the album, and arguably of Cassidy's entire genre blurring career, is 'Over The Rainbow'. Originally a Judy Garland schmaltz fest from The Wizard of Oz, Cassidy transforms it into something not merely tolerable but poignant and moving. If you're interested in hearing one of the greatest singers of our generation, Songbird is a good place to start.
Time After Time(2000)It's difficult to separate all these Eva Cassidy studio recordings - none of them really follow any internal logic of their own, and they're basically collections of songs that Cassidy enjoyed, without any real pattern or thematic consistency. Of course, while it makes them difficult to write about, it does make them more palatable than something like Christmas With Eva Cassidy - since she was never popular, she was able to record whatever she liked. In this release from her archives, this includes everything from the Cyndi Lauper penned title track, The Box Tops hit 'The Letter', the country 'Penny To My Name', and Joni Mitchell's 'Woodstock', all delivered with Cassidy's inimitable style that makes genre categorisations all but futile. You have to give credit to an album with the audacity to open with an obscure Simon and Garfunkel album track ('Kathy's Song') and close with the a capella gospel of 'Way Beyond The Blue'. Time After Time isn't quite as strong as Songbird or Live At Blues Alley, but really in Cassidy's case the star scale is pretty arbitrary - if you like other Eva Cassidy albums, you'll enjoy this one too.
 American Tune(2003)Usually I'd be cynical about the way that these Eva Cassidy recordings are continuously unearthed, but it's a pleasure to hear more from this original talent. The pattern of American Tune isn't too much different from Songbird; ten songs unearthed since her death, with similar arrangements. This time the focus is less on jazz-oriented material, and the song selection is more skewed towards pop, taking on Paul Simon for the title track and Cyndi Lauper's 'True Colours'. Lauper's 'Time After Time' also appeared on a previous album, meaning that we can expect Cassidy's cover of 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' on 2006's archival release. Because it's cut from the same cloth as the rest of her studio albums, there's not too much else to say about it. It doesn't feel quite as significant as her earlier albums, but it's just as listenable. There's plenty more to impress; Cassidy is able to record both the most hackneyed cover ('Yesterday', officially the most covered song in the history of popular music) and an obscure Fairport Convention song ('Dark Eyed Molly'), and make them both her own. She also tackles 'Hallelujah, I Love Him So' and 'It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)'; they're not as profound as most of the jazz classics she tackles, but there's plenty of sheer enthusiasm in the delivery. I'm slightly less convinced by her version of 'American Tune'; while it works musically, its anti-Nixon message makes it hard to accept outside of its historical context. Cassidy's songs were always relational, and to a lesser extent spiritual, so it's not a particularly good fit. The strongest tracks are the spacious acoustic readings of 'The Water is Wide', 'Dark Eyed Molly' and 'You Take My Breath Away'; the Fairport Convention tune in particular inspires me to track down the original version, which is exactly what Cassidy was aiming for. I'm not sure American Tune would have been released in this form if Cassidy was around to supervise, and it doesn't have a profound statement like 'Over The Rainbow' to give it weight, but it's another enjoyable installment from the Cassidy archives; let's hope that there's more to come.
|
|
|
|
Written 2001-2007, Graham Fyfe
