Eva Cassidy - Songbird [1998]

Like the briefest, brightest shooting star, Eva Cassidy was here, then she wasn't. Perhaps God wanted his angel back. During a lifetime of playing and listening to all styles of music, I have heard most of the great popular and operatic singers whose work survives in recordings: Caruso, Armstrong, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Van Morrison, just to name a few. But I was not prepared when a friend gave me this precious album. From the first bars of the first song, "Fields of Gold," you are struck by the pure natural beauty of Eva's voice, the perfect pitch, intonation, vibrato, inflection. It seems to be exactly what a woman should sound like when she sings. Your sense of awe will only build as she sings over appropriately spare arrangements (including her understated but perfect guitar and keyboard work) of pop, soul, gospel, folk, and blues standards. Impossibly, each one of her performances (some of which were live) becomes definitive. Just for good measure, she even takes on the song of the century, "Over the Rainbow," and eclipses Judy Garland's version--doesn't just eclipse it--blows it completely away in an anthemic performance which is, believe it or not, understated. I have never heard anything like it. Listening to it never fails to bring tears. Even trying to describe it to friends who haven't heard it brings tears. Happiest when she was on her bicycle, Eva was a shy little waif-like blonde who never thought too highly of her awesome vocal instrument. But she possessed buckets and buckets of soul without overdoing it, without oversinging (as Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and others are known to do). I concur in all the rapturous reviews above and below. It's impossible not to love this music, just as it is impossible not to feel a strong sense of loss knowing that she's no longer with us. I defy anyone to listen to these ten songs and not be pleasantly devastated. This album will haunt you. It will hit you in your most vulnerable spot. It will become an indispensable part of your life.

Eva Cassidy - Songbird [1998]