January 26, 2009

"Songbird"

When I look at my music collection, I see a lot of female singers, from Ronstadt to Streisand to Karen Carpenter to Bonnie Raitt to Joni and Judy and Emmylou and Charlotte Church. They are all great performers and singers.

For pure clarity of voice, I've just heard the best of them: Songbird, by Eva Cassidy. Holy smokes.

I remember hearing and reading about her after her death from melanoma in 1996, but I'd never had the inclination to look for any of her albums. I was picking over the CDs in the library today and noticed this one, so I brought it home.

Go get it.

Posted by Linkmeister at January 26, 2009 04:30 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I have all her cd's and there are not many. I absolutely love her. Someone I worked with several years ago heard something I was listening to and his comment was, well, if you like ?? then you are going to love Eva Cassidy. Needless to say I did, bought whatever she had made and cannot for the life of me remember who the other person was. Good on you for discovering her!!

Posted by: cyn at January 26, 2009 05:37 PM

Oh, yes; Eva Cassidy had one of the finest voices I've ever heard, and her arrangements of the songs are superb. Some of her recordings are the finest versions of those songs around: "Fields of Gold", "Who Knows Where the Time Goes"*, "Early Morning Rain".

Some googling tells me that a lot of people discovered her the way I did, via a story about her on "60 Minutes". It may be the most affecting story I ever saw on that show. After hearing her incredible voice, the story of her death brought me to tears.

* And if you'd asked me ten years ago I would have said nobody could ever surpass Judy Collins' version.

Posted by: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) at January 26, 2009 09:23 PM

Okay, Bruce, you got me. I had to go find out which album "Who Knows..." is on. Fortunately, Imagine is also available at my library. Better than Judy Collins' version? That's almost unthinkable.

Posted by: Linkmeister at January 26, 2009 09:32 PM

I too own all of her CDs and her version of Fields of Gold is probably my favorite song of all time.

Posted by: Karan at January 27, 2009 02:08 PM