Eva Cassidy [Live At Blues Alley]
It's hard to categorize Eva Cassidy, but i guess i'll put her in the Blues bracket, i haven't heard her other albums, so i suppose this just might be more Bluesy than usual because she chose this programme especially for this venue, on the whole i hate live albums, a stadium full of screaming whistling kids isn't my thing, but Blues Alley is very intimate, or maybe hardly anyone turned up!.
9 - Autumn Leaves, unlike some of the other tracks on the album, this features just Eva on guitar and vocals for the most part, with a central instrumental for guitar and piano [Lenny Williams], a gently warm electric guitar, 'i see your lips, the summer kisses', it's so atmospheric, and heartbreaking too, 'and soon i'll hear, old winters song', it's that heightened expression on 'old' [1:38] that is so delicious, and repeated later in the song [3:25], the piano [2:13-3:04] has also a gentle tinkling of the ivories, a nice little variety to break up the song and give it variety, Eva creates a real intensity with little instrumentation.
12 - What A Wonderful World, this song really affected me, of course the famous version is by Louis Armstrong, and he's such an idiomatic singer, with that wonderful husky growl, of course Eva Cassidy is nothing like that, she sings this song fairly straight, she doesn't turn it into Gospel or anything, and it's this straightness that is so disarming, the song seems to have a life of its own, the greatness isn't particularly in the singer, it's the song itself, Eva misses out a verse, the one about 'skies of blue' etc, i wonder why?, the background piano is cleverly done [especially 1:40+ & 3:37+], and this song closes the set, one month before she died, she sang this one lone song live as a 'farewell', it closed her life perfectly, and i guess in some ways it epitomized her life too.
Eva Cassidy is American, born in 1963, and died in 1996 at the young age of 33 of cancer, she wasn't recognized in her own lifetime, but became phenomenally famous afterwards, she recorded this album in early 1996, by the end of the year she was dead, the front cover photo [by Larry Melton], is a black and white shot of Eva outside Blues Alley, i really like it, even though there's not quite enough contrast in the photo, the pose is good, nice angles too, the lettering is my own, rubbed on transfers down the side, and track numbers on the back, why don't record companies provide track numbers?, it's crazy.
The tracks that really moved me were 3, 5, 8-9 & 12, on the whole these are the more slower reflective songs, and Eva Cassidy has a certain way with ever so subtly making vocal changes / additions, that sound just perfect, they make a phenomenal difference to the whole mood of the piece, the two best tracks on this listen were 9 & 12, here's my synopsis of both,
12 - What A Wonderful World, this song really affected me, of course the famous version is by Louis Armstrong, and he's such an idiomatic singer, with that wonderful husky growl, of course Eva Cassidy is nothing like that, she sings this song fairly straight, she doesn't turn it into Gospel or anything, and it's this straightness that is so disarming, the song seems to have a life of its own, the greatness isn't particularly in the singer, it's the song itself, Eva misses out a verse, the one about 'skies of blue' etc, i wonder why?, the background piano is cleverly done [especially 1:40+ & 3:37+], and this song closes the set, one month before she died, she sang this one lone song live as a 'farewell', it closed her life perfectly, and i guess in some ways it epitomized her life too.
