Imagine

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I Can Only Be Me” is a Stevie Wonder song from the movie soundtrack School Daze by Spike Lee, a filmmaker whom Eva greatly admired. It’s got a haunting melody,” says Hugh Cassidy, who had suggested that Izzi send his tapes to Blix Street Records for consideration for the album.

You’ve Changed” is another “repeat” song in that a duet version is part of the album THE OTHER SIDE. When Terry Wogan played it on his morning radio show on August 2nd, he said “If that doesn’t turn you to jelly, nothing will,” and “We should quit now — have heard many version of this song — none as beautiful as this one by Eva Cassidy.YOUTUBEWe have a YouTube channel where you can watch some of the celtic music related videos we've found. As a solo, it was a standard in Eva’s repertoire with the band, and she sang it at Blues Alley the night the live album was recorded. Elsewhere, the solo acoustic reading of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” shows off her guitar skills, and if “Imagine” doesn’t ever scale the heights of Songbird’s “Over the Rainbow” it still demonstrates how she always had something new and uniquely compelling to say when performing a familiar standard. Eva only ever recorded two Stevie Wonder songs, however — this one and an unreleased version of “Superstition” that Biondo describes as “funky. On the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, MTV listed its choice of the five best covers of his song “Imagine.

One of the UK fans who was listening to Radio 2 in August of 2002 wrote me, “With Wogan away on holiday, Johnnie Walker is sitting in for him and played ‘Early Morning Rain’ this morning. Barbara Cassidy tells me that the beautiful picture of Eva on the cover of the album was taken by Eva’s cousin Walter Wunderlich, the son of Barbara’s sister Dorothea.Studio recordings “Still Not Ready” and “I Can Only Be Me” are, oddly perhaps, the least successful cuts. An odds-and-ends collection culled from diverse sources that holds together, thanks to Cassidy's torchy interpretive genius. Eva’s brother Dan Cassidy’s fiddle is featured in this recording, which was also part of Dan’s solo album DAN CASSIDY ON THE FIDDLE (available only in Iceland). And if they’re selling CDs* from their guitar cases, as Eva once did, support their talents and efforts that way too.

All of these tracks are previously unreleased and most are live recordings, but listeners who already own LIVE AT BLUES ALLEY know just how refreshing Cassidy’s live performances were. The information given here is drawn from the album notes, from conversations and interviews with Eva’s family and musical colleagues, from e-mail from Eva’s fans, and from my own personal knowledge. None of Eva’s friends remember anything specific about Eva being a Sandy Denny fan, but years later Chris Biondo found a cassette tape under the seat of his truck, labelled “Sandy Denny,” in Eva’s handwriting. The black-and-white closeup photo of Eva was taken by Eva’s friend Larry Melton, who also photographed Eva for the cover of LIVE AT BLUES ALLEY. Chris Biondo told me in 2000, “She was playing at the Maryland Inn and had asked me to bring my DAT machine.Besides ‘Imagine’ and ‘Tennessee Waltz,’ she did ‘Wade in the Water,’ ‘Kathy’s Song,’ ‘Songbird,’ ‘The Bold Young Farmer,’ and a few others.