Eva Marie Cassidy, born February 2, 1963, Washington, DC, and died November 2, 1996, in Bowie, Maryland. She was an American singer, who was described by The Guardian in Britain as “one the greatest voices of her generation.” Her musical influences included blues, jazz, gospel, pop, folk, gospel, and gospel. Cassidy was virtually unknown beyond her home in Washington, DC, where she died from melanoma, which had spread to her bones, in 1996. Since then, her posthumously released recordings sold more than four million copies. In 2001, Songbird reached #1 in the UK album charts. Eva Cassidy was the youngest of four children to Hugh Cassidy and Barbara Cassidy. She was an artist and musician from an early age. She was nine years old when her father taught her how to play the guitar. Soon, she started to sing and play at family events. As a Bowie High School student, she sang in a local band called Stonehenge and was praised. Cassidy started her professional career at the age of 18 singing and playing guitar with an Easy Street band in Washington, D.C. The band performed at various venues, including weddings, corporate parties and pubs. Cassidy was a singer and guitarist at Wild World in Maryland during the summer 1983. Dan, her brother, was also part of this band. Cassidy was a member of several other bands in the 1980s. These included the Motown-oriented soul band The Honeybees and the techno-pop group Characters Without Names. They were later called Method Actor. Cassidy worked in Annapolis, Maryland as a furniture painter and as a propagator for a plant nursery. She met Chris Biondo in 1986. He was a bassist and engineer and helped her to find gigs as a backing singer for different acts. Biondo and Cassidy hired “Eva Cassidy Band”, which consisted of Chris Biondo (Lenny Williams), Keith Grimes, Raice McLeod and Raice McLeod. She began performing regularly in the Washington region in 1990. Biondo recorded Cassidy’s voice in 1992 for Chuck Brown. Brown, best known for being the “Godfather Of Go-go”, is also a jazz/blues singer. The first commercial recording of Cassidy was made with Chuck Brown, The Other Side. It featured classic songs like “Fever”, Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” as well as Cassidy’s trademark tune “Over the Rainbow”. Liaison Records released the album and distributed it. They also published Brown’s Go–go albums. Although Cassidy’s duet CD was well-received by many record companies, they all demanded that she stick to one style (e.g. pop or jazz). This Cassidy refused to do. [citation needed] In 1993, Eva Cassidy received two Wammie Awards for “Female Voice Roots/Traditional” from the Washington music community.
