SONGBIRD
THE BIOGRAPHICAL BOOK SONGBIRD is subtitled Eva Cassidy, Her Story By Those Who Knew Her, and it is fully authorized by Eva’s parents, Barbara and Hugh Cassidy. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 2001 in hardcover (which sold 100,000 copies) and softcover. The 2003 US edition was published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group USA, in a good-quality softcover binding; it includes two additional chapters and more pictures.
It is a very beautiful book, full of gorgeous reproductions of Eva’s artwork, and many photographs of Eva which have never before been published. The text is based on extensive interviews with Eva’s family, friends, and musical colleagues. I enthusiastically recommend the book to all Eva Cassidy fans, especially those of you who have been thinking, “I wish I had known her.”
Reader Reactions:
Here is a sampling of comments from Eva Cassidy’s fans:
- “Surely a worthy tribute to Eva”
- “After having read the book, you really think that you know the person behind the music.”
- “The book in a way ‘squares the circle’ regarding Eva’s story from the people who knew her best. This extension
to the Music we already know and love so much is a ‘must have’ item for anyone who has been moved by Eva’s presence
in any way.” - “There is a life in that book– it is there on every page– and whether you read it right through or just open
it at random, you look up having made contact with someone you’ve wanted to meet for a long time.” - “The book is a treasure; I shall always cherish and enjoy it.”
- “It’s so warm and personal, and the love and respect of her friends and family is apparent in every word.”
- “The text is absorbing, one hears much in the voices of those who knew and loved Eva. Simply a must for the Eva fan!”
- “I read the book in one evening and it was beautiful. I can honestly say that is the most wonderful portrait of a genuine
human being that I have ever experienced. The pictures and packaging of the book are fantastic.” - “I finally received my “Songbird” book last night. What a stunning publication! I immediately started browsing through
it. I put it aside for a while then came back later and started reading. I stopped at page 42 and started to peruse
the rest of the book. As I neared the end, I could feel myself starting to get tight in the throat and my eyes misting. Like the story of the Titanic, one knows the outcome but the story is so compelling!”
Critical Acclaim:
The distinguished Swedish music critic Magnus Eriksson reviewed the Songbird book for the second largest newspaper in Sweden, Svenska Dagbladet. Henrik in Denmark translated it for us. Thank you, Henrik!
MAGNUS ERIKSSON, Svenska Dagbladet, entertainment page, February 6, 2002
(The article includes a photo of the book’s dust jacket; this has the legend “The book about one of the greatest voices of all time”)
Eva Cassidy – a Shy Genius
According to a BBC Radio 2 jury, Eva Cassidy was possessed of one of the best singing voices of all time. Another poll put Over the Rainbow on the list of the most memorable songs ever written. Eva Cassidy’s version received more votes than did Judy Garland’s. Songbird, an Eva Cassidy compilation, reached the number one spot on the British sales chart after hovering around the No. 80 position for almost two years. Not bad for a singer who in her lifetime hardly ever performed outside Washington D.C. or Maryland, except for a couple of weeks at the Blues Bar in Reykjavik, Iceland, 1994.
Yet Eva Cassidy was not like any other singer. She was not a songwriter, but an interpreter of other people’s songs. She was low-voiced and quite happy with an audience of a few dozen at her concerts. She missed several contract opportunities with major record companies because they found it difficult to pigeonhole her music. Eva Cassidy’s heroes belonged to the back catalogs of jazz and folk music: Ella Fitzgerald, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Sarah Vaughan, but also Aretha Franklin and the Wilson sisters from Heart. Yet she made the songs her own. This could take a long time. She began experimenting with Over the rainbow in 1984. It achieved its final form in 1996, the year she died, at the age of thirty-three.
In her lifetime Eva Cassidy released two records. Four posthumous albums have since been released. There are also quite a few ambitious articles. Yet we were not much the wiser, but Rob Burley and Jonathan Maitland’s book Songbird now fills in many of the gaps in our knowledge. It is an interview biography in which Eva Cassidy’s family and friends tell about her life. They all concur: Eva Cassidy was a brilliantly gifted singer and a faithful friend. But the picture that emerges is also that of an insecure and shy woman; in fact there is more than a hint of internal conflict.
Central to the picture is also her singleness of purpose as an artist. Eva Cassidy painted when she did not sing. The book offers many fine examples of her idiosyncratic, mildly sarcastic, sometimes visionary pictorial art. The book also contains moving memories, penetrating analysis and mere curios. Yet such details are sometimes valuable, as when we learn that Dan, her brother, recorded the sorrowful violin heard on I know you by heart, having come from Iceland, where he lives, to Maryland in order to meet his sister Eva one last time.
WASHINGTON CITY PAPER REVIEW: : There was a VERY nice write-up about the Songbird biography in the Washington City Paper on November 18, 2003. Pamela Murray Winters interviewed one of the book’s co-authors, Elana Rhodes Byrd, for the paper’s “Artifacts” section (page 56). Winters writes that the book “turns out to be as sentimental, idiosyncratic, and multifaceted as its subject. Part coffee-table book, part oral history, it recounts Cassidy’s short life and artistic and personal impact from many points of view, and it conveys a cozy intimacy with informal snapshots along with sketches and other artwork by Cassidy — a gifted visual artist as well as singer.” The article ends “Byrd is confident that the more people hear of Cassidy, the more they’ll want to hear: ‘Eva’s her own best salesman.'” Doesn’t that say it all?
BEHIND THE RAINBOW
Music journalist Johan Bakker’s 2012 biography Behind the Rainbow: The Tragic Life of Eva Cassidy was recently republished in an updated 2023 edition. It is available as a Kindle e-book as well as a print paperback from Omnibus Press London.
SONGBOOKS
There are a number of Eva Cassidy songbooks with guitar chords or tabs. The ones I know about are listed on this page.