Songbird

Eva Cassidy

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 19, 1998)
• Original Release Date: March 31, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Blix Street
• ASIN: B000006AKD
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (626 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #592 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Songbird cherry-picks tracks from the three locally released albums of Eva Cassidy, whose hauntingly beautiful vocals went virtually unheard outside her native Washington, D.C., during her short 33 years with us. Lost to melanoma in 1996, Cassidy sang with an unaffected purity and an astonishing ability to make both classic and contemporary songs sound like they were written just for her. Sting's "Fields of Gold" finally lives up to its title through the alchemy of Cassidy's transcendent rendition, while other tracks on this anthology showcase her ease in the realms of pop (Christine McVie's "Songbird"), soul ("People Get Ready"), gospel ("Wade on the Water"), and traditional standards ("Autumn Leaves" and "Over the Rainbow"). Framed by understated jazz and pop arrangements, Cassidy's clear, soulful voice and exquisite phrasing make her that rarest of vocalists whose interpretations are a complement to any song. A fine introduction to a true talent. --Billy Grenier

Product Description

Songbird is a posthumous anthology culled from the album Live At Blues Alley and her other solo release, Eva By Heart, along with one track from her 1992 duet album with Chuck Brown titled The Other Side. Blix label.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

360 of 363 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Voice of an angel, February 24, 2000

By	Chris Norbury (Owatonna, MN United States) - See all my reviews

Simply put, this CD has changed my life. "Over the Rainbow" stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it, bringing tears to my eyes. I've listened to it at least 50 times in the last few days, and it still moves me like no other piece of music ever has. "Autumn Leaves" and "Fields of Gold" are equally brilliant and have also set new standards for their interpretations. Then in the blink of an eye, Eva turns into a soulful,sultry, bluesy wailer on "Wade in the Water", "Wayfaring Stranger", and "People Get Ready". The range of expression and depth of phrasing in her songs are second to none.

The most amazing thing about her singing, however is that no matter what type of music she sang, whether pop, soul, R&B, folk, jazz, or standards, she outsings the best of the masters in each area and does it effortlessly, simply and with no pretense. Are you listening out there, all of you graduates of the "Sam Harris(of Star Search infamy)/Mariah Carey School of Pyrotechnical Caterwauling"? Just sing from the heart, like Eva did!

Eva Cassidy has raised the bar by which vocal performance will be measured from now on. And she did it on her own terms, singing what she wanted to sing, the way she wanted to sing it. After trying to work out a deal with record execs and refusing to be pigeonholed into a certain style of music, she said "I just wanna sing. I like to do a little of everything". Eva, I just wanna listen!

175 of 177 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A voice for the ages, February 19, 2003

By	David McAlister "hazymac" (Tarpon Springs, Florida USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like the briefest, brightest shooting star, Eva Cassidy was here, then she wasn't. Perhaps God wanted his angel back.

During a lifetime of playing and listening to all styles of music, I have heard most of the great popular and operatic singers whose work survives in recordings: Caruso, Armstrong, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Van Morrison, just to name a few. But I was not prepared when a friend gave me this precious album last November.

From the first bars of the first song, "Fields of Gold," you are struck by the pure natural beauty of Eva's voice, the perfect pitch, intonation, vibrato, inflection. It seems to be exactly what a woman should sound like when she sings. Your sense of awe will only build as she sings over appropriately spare arrangements (including her understated but perfect guitar and keyboard work) of pop, soul, gospel, folk, and blues standards. Impossibly, each one of her performances (some of which were live) becomes definitive.

Just for good measure, she even takes on the song of the century, "Over the Rainbow," and eclipses Judy Garland's version--doesn't just eclipse it--blows it completely away in an anthemic performance which is, believe it or not, understated. I have never heard anything like it. Listening to it never fails to bring tears. Even trying to describe it to friends who haven't heard it brings tears.

Happiest when she was on her bicycle, Eva was a shy little waif-like blonde who never thought too highly of her awesome vocal instrument. But she possessed buckets and buckets of soul without overdoing it, without oversinging (as Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and others are known to do). I concur in all the rapturous reviews above and below. It's impossible not to love this music, just as it is impossible not to feel a strong sense of loss knowing that she's no longer with us. I defy anyone to listen to these ten songs and not be pleasantly devastated. This album will haunt you. It will hit you in your most vulnerable spot. It will become an indispensable part of your life.

(Since November I have bought the rest of her available CDs and continue to marvel at her fabulous and definitive performances. You haven't heard anyone sing "Danny Boy" until you've heard Eva sing it.)

91 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most beautiful voice i the world, October 29, 1999

By A Customer

Forget the calculated pop garbage of Mariah Carey. Forget the over-produced muck of Celine Dion. If you want to truly hear a beautiful voice that doesn't require over-the-top arrangements and lots of hair spray, you MUST hear Eva Cassidy.

If you first glance at the song list on the "Songbird" CD, some of the titles seem, to put it frankly, totally avoidable. "Over the Rainbow." "Wade in the Water." Songs that have been remade and remade until you may think nothing new could be added to them. Eva Cassidy was able to take these songs and turn them into something new and worthwhile. Her rendition of "Over the Rainbow" is absolutely breathtaking....moving, perfectly sung, emotional, understated. Her version of this tune perfectly captures what she was capable of...taking a song and totally making it her own.

The song choices range from traditional tunes like "Oh, I Had a Golden Thread" to contemporary numbers like Christine McVie's "Songbird." But Eva Cassidy was able to take this variety and work it to her advantage; despite the fact that "Songbird" is actually a collection of songs from three previously released albums, the performances are amazingly seamless and this makes the album as a whole a million times better than the overdone, poser pop that invades U.S. radio.

The most amazing performance here is her achingly beautiful version of Sting's "Fields of Gold." The song is made all the more poignant byt the fact that Eva Cassidy lost her battle with melanoma in 1996 at the age of 33....so when she sings "you'll remember me/when the west wind moves/among the fields of barley," it will easily bring a tear to the eye. Simply amazing.