Late Night OTB – Eva Cassidy
Eva Cassidy has always been noted for her amazing singing voice, and that praise is certainly justified. Still, I think that the true measure of her talent is her arrangements of cover songs–she always managed to do a perfect arrangement, which I think equally showed off her amazing talent. Here’s a great example of that in her cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”.
Lyrics:
“What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.
You speak of her in the present tense. She has been dead for over a decade.
I know that she’s passed on. If you’ll note, I did use the past tense.
Six or seven years ago I stumbled upon her version of “Fields of Gold” and said to myself “My goodness, who is this woman with the wonderful voice.” I went to Amazon to order a CD and was shocked to read that she had died a while back from melanoma. Needless to say I bought all the CD’s and her songs are among the most played on my iPod.
This is the first time I’ve actually seen her sing. It just makes me sad all over to think where she might have gone if she had lived.
I like her rendition of
How Can I Keep From Singing
I believe breast cancer took her at far too young an age.
She died of skin cancer on November 2, 1996 at the age of 33. She joins a small list artists who displayed the ability to master multiple musical styles. The quality of her voice was equal to any of the great female singers. Many of her recorded songs were done as scratch vocals which her band then “filled in” following her death making the recorded legacy even more serendipitous than her suprising posthumous success. What a tragic loss for the current generations.