Amazon.co.uk Review
It's difficult not to feel jealous of the audience who were present for these shows at the Blues Alley club in January, 1996. Eva Cassidy's voice has the soul of Aretha Franklin, the smoky melancholy of Billie Holiday, the raw passion of Janis Joplin all rolled into one--and she'll never make another record. Later that same year she died of cancer, leaving behind a painfully small recorded legacy to be discovered belatedly and posthumously by the rest of the world. But those fortunate few in the Blues Alley club knew the secret long before. Thankfully, producer, mentor and (for a time) boyfriend Chris Biondo had the foresight to record Eva Cassidy for--as things turned out--posterity. So, imagine yourself in a dark corner of that tiny club and let the woman with the guitar and the extraordinary voice serenade you. The set consists of standards, mostly jazz--alternately bluesy and torchy--but with a sprinkling of folk ballads that she sings with haunting delicacy (Sting's "Fields Of Gold" being the stand out track). Perfectionist that she was, Cassidy refused to let this album be released unless a studio track--Pete Seeger's "Oh, Had I A Golden Thread"--was also included. But every track is a polished jewel in her hands: the limpid beauty of Johnny Mercer's evergreen "Autumn Leaves", the swinging blues of Billie Holiday's "Fine And Mellow", the uptempo soul of Al Green's "Take Me To The River". There are only four albums featuring Eva Cassidy, and one of those is a compilation of the other three, so for anyone who is haunted by her voice,
Live At Blues Alley is a must-have. --
Mark Walker
CD Description
Singer Eva Cassidy achieved posthumous fame with SONGBIRD, an anthology of her finest moments. During her lifetime, however, Cassidy made a name for herself in Washington, D.C., where she lived and regularly performed. LIVE AT BLUES ALLEY captures Cassidy in her element running through a list of standards like "What a Wonderful World" and contemporary favorites like "Bridge Over Troubled Water".
While Cassidy's choice of material might seem somewhat stock, her singing is anything but. Her clear, guileless voice dazzles in both itstechnical facility and its emotional expressiveness, and itis easy to hear why she had a dedicated local following (and would have broken through to a wider audience had it not been for her death in 1996). Fans of SONGBIRD should seek outLIVE AT BLUES ALLEY for a taste of Cassidy as she sounded in intimate quarters.
