Eva Cassidy

Eva Cassidy was a singer whose emotive versions of traditional standards and fusion of jazz, blues, pop, and folk continue to captivate fans worldwide long after her death in 1996. • Cassidy was born and raised in the Washington, D.C., area. Her father taught her how to play the guitar at age nine and later formed a family ensemble band. • While attending Maryland’s Bowie High School, Cassidy sang with a local band called Stonehenge, despite her intense shyness. • She worked as a session singer throughout the early ’90s, providing backing vocals for acts like the go-go band Experience Unlimited and rapper E-40. • In 1992, Cassidy and Chuck Brown, known as the “Godfather of Go-Go,” released a duet album titled The Other Side. It included standards like “Fever” and “Over the Rainbow.” • She self-released the album Live at Blues Alley in 1996. The LP features songs by everyone from Sting to Billie Holiday. • Cassidy died of melanoma in 1996 at age 33. Her solo debut studio album, Eva by Heart, arrived posthumously in 1997. • The posthumous 1998 collection Songbird topped the UK albums chart and went six-times platinum after a live performance of “Over the Rainbow” aired on the British music show Top of the Pops 2. • Two more posthumous Cassidy albums—2002’s Imagine and 2004’s American Tune—reached No. 1 on the UK charts. The former reached No. 1 in the US, while the latter went Top 5.