Imagine

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If you were to award a prize for the most quietly devastating moment of radio, a feasible contender might well be Richard E Grant’s appearance on Desert Island Discs last month. Discussing his choice of Eva Cassidy’s cover of “Fields of Gold”, the actor spoke of how that song had helped him to navigate the loss of his wife, the dialect coach Joan Washington. Official Albums Chart Top 100 10 March 2023 - 16 March 2023". Official Charts. March 10, 2023 . Retrieved March 11, 2023. At age 11, Cassidy began singing and playing guitar in a Washington-area band called Easy Street. [6] This band performed in a variety of styles at weddings, corporate parties, and pubs. Due to her shyness, she struggled with performing in front of strangers. [7] While a student at Bowie High School, she sang with a local band called Stonehenge. [4] During the summer of 1983, Cassidy sang and played guitar six days a week at the theme park Wild World. [4] Her younger brother Dan, a fiddler, was also a member of this working band. She enrolled in art classes at Prince George's Community College but dropped out after finding them unhelpful. [8]

Eva Cassidy died three decades ago, but in her short life, she did do a number of recordings, most notably of her singing live at the Blues Alley club in her native Washington DC. At that point, she was relatively unknown outside her home state, but a recording of her version of Songbird, written by the late Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac fame started to circulate and her reputation grew.On the other hand, Biondo said Cassidy “thought that was kinda cool,” an attitude that underscores her focus on the performance rather than its reception. “She just liked to go out and sing,” he said. “She didn’t want anybody to jump up and down.” On the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, MTV listed its choice of the five best covers of his song “Imagine.” Eva’s is listed, with the comment, “Released six years after her death, it showcases Cassidy’s jaw-dropping voice above all else, which is why it’s such a great version of the song. Tender and heartbreakingly simple, it sadly remains — like most of her work — vastly overlooked.” We didn’t take the plunge before the arranging/engineering team of William Ross and Jochem van der Saag took it for us,” Straw says. The pair had worked with the producer David Foster on a Cassidy duet with Michael Bolton a few years earlier, but now “they appeared out of the blue with their Eva Orchestral ideas in the form of synth demos”.

Farber, Jim (March 1, 2023). " 'A séance in song': How a new album fulfils one of Eva Cassidy's musical dreams". The Independent . Retrieved March 11, 2023. Chu, Jeff (April 9, 2001). "Over the Rainbow". Time.com. Archived from the original on October 23, 2012 . Retrieved March 6, 2008. a b c Huey, Steve. "Eva Cassidy: Biography, Albums, Streaming Links". AllMusic. All Media Guide . Retrieved June 10, 2017. Scarpone, Amanda (January 26, 2005). "Eva Cassidy Remembered". Broadwayworld.com . Retrieved November 2, 2016.Though many have come to similar conclusions since, Biondo was one of the first to do so. He met Cassidy in the winter of 1986 when, on the recommendation of a mutual friend, she came to visit him at his small home recording studio. “She was afraid to come inside because she had not done any recording like this before,” Biondo said. Cassidy remained equally cool when it came to meetings with record companies. “Maybe half a dozen companies came down to talk to her,” Biondo said. “But she never did the kinds of things the people who think they’re going to get a contract do, which is to act all giddy and make fast friends with the A&R people. I don’t think they were too impressed with her enthusiasm level.” But it is only now that her dream has been realised, her new album, I Can Only Be Me, has been around seven years in the making.