“Eva Cassidy would have crushed it on American Idol.”
Fans make this comment a lot. Surely, they reason, Eva’s talent would have made her a big winner on a modern TV talent show! But would it? And would Eva have participated in that kind of program in the first place? I decided to explore the issue in consultation with others who knew her.
During Eva’s teens and early 20s, the main TV talent shows on US television were “The Gong Show” and “Star Search.” According to her brother Dan, “Eva watched both of them! She seemed drawn into those shows and was amazed how cruel and rude the judges could be. She particularly disliked Marion [Ross], the actress who played the mother on ‘Happy Days’ and was a judge on ‘The Gong Show.'”
Eva’s friend Ned Judy also remembers her attitude toward nasty judging: “‘Showtime at the Apollo’ had ‘Amateur Night.’ Eva and I talked about how cruel they were to the losers. The audience would boo until the contestant was pulled off stage with a hook! Eva didn’t like that at all.”
Dan doubts his sister would have signed on for a TV talent show. “Eva would never have been interested in entering one of those competitive (but perhaps ‘staged’) shows!”
Eva’s sister Margret remembers more specifically, “People would TELL her, she ought to be on ‘Star Search.’ She definitely was not interested! But was this because she was too shy? Was it because she thought shows like this were too ‘commercial,’ or because her self-confidence was not that good? If I had to guess, it would be a combination of all three of these.”
Ned Judy agrees. “Eva had total confidence in her singing, but she was not comfortable with other aspects of entertainment, like talking to the audience, or even looking at them. Acting and dancing were out of the question. She just wanted to sing, sometimes with her eyes closed. That wasn’t enough for most American talent shows [even] in the 1980s… Eva would never strut around on stage, she stood still and sang her heart out. Agents, managers and band leaders tried to get her to dance and move around and smile at the audience, and she hated that! She could never win a talent show or get a gig if any of that was required. She didn’t want anything to do with that. We discussed it a lot.”
Eva did watch those shows, however, and they contributed to her musical development. Ned Judy recalls, “In 1983-84 we watched a lot of ‘Star Search’ because of a contestant named Sam Harris. One night he sang ‘Over the Rainbow’ like we’d never heard it. We were both totally blown away; hearing it still brings tears to my eyes. The ending is amazing. Sam Harris is much more dramatic than Eva, but he showed her new ways to expand the boundaries of an old song. I recorded that episode on videotape and we watched it a lot. She worked on her new version and we eventually recorded it at my house, and that’s the tape she played for Chris [Biondo] a few years later… Eva’s ‘Over the Rainbow’ was heavily influenced by ‘Star Search,’ and she probably wouldn’t have recorded it if she hadn’t heard the Sam Harris version.”
The defeat still rankles for the participants. Dan Cassidy, who played bass and violin and contributed to the vocals, points out that the event wasn’t a proper Stonehenge gig in the absence of Mark Merella and Larry Melton, and that “the acoustics (Allen’s Pond roller rink) were horrible. The winner was determined by the amount of cheering from the audience.”
Ned’s friend Steve O’Hearn was in the audience, and remembers the occasion well. “I recall them doing a then-newish Yes song that started with an a cappella intro, I think it had to be ‘Leave It’ from the 90125 album. They all nailed it on the vocals (and the rest of course). Everything else they did was brilliant and powerful and amazing. They were impossible to outdo, no question.” Why didn’t Eva’s band win? As Steve O’Hearn tells it, the winning band, the last one to perform, featured “crowd favorites, trendier songs, more songs with a rock beat. The crowd was rocking. They never did that with Stonehenge, who was into quirky timings, unusual tempos, and characteristics that showcased their own remarkable talents. Was Stonehenge musically more talented? Any musician who knows music would say absolutely yes, no question. But that wasn’t the criteria that night. Had musically talented judges made the choice, Stonehenge would’ve been the winner.”
A few years later, Eva sang in a talent competition at a bar in Rockville, Maryland. Her friend and producer Chris Biondo recalls, “It was at a place called Manny’s, we went over there, Eva and Al Dale and some other people from the studio. Eva sang ‘Natural Woman’ with [the accompaniment on] my DAT machine. Another girl singer had loaded the place with a lot of her fans, and they seemed a little worried when they heard Eva, I don’t think they expected that level of competition! The crowd really seemed to like Eva and she got a lot of applause. When the other girl’s name was called, I don’t think Eva cared, I think she had fun, it was just something to do that was different, I don’t think she felt any type of disappointment at all. The other girl won maybe a hundred dollars.”
So would Eva Cassidy have “crushed it on American Idol”? My answer is no, mostly because I agree with Dan, Margret, and Ned that she would not have put herself into that situation in the first place. Eva didn’t have that kind of ego. People who audition for these shows tend to be interested in fame, not music. Consider the abuse they voluntarily sign up for. During the audition phase some of the hopeful contestants are publicly ridiculed. The chosen competitors are deprived of artistic autonomy and often subjected to rigged voting, abrasive or cruel commentary, and “mentors” who are given actual scripts to enhance the perception of “real” drama. As the seasons progress, contestants are demeaned by the expectation that details of their personal lives are part of the entertainment, and if they don’t have a good enough sob story, they can always fabricate one. Emotional manipulation? All the compassionate nuance of “Lord of the Flies”? Pandering to the worst aspects of human nature? You bet, and don’t forget the exploitative management contracts that make the “winners” into actual losers.
I’m glad Eva missed out on all that.