| Live at Blues Alley | ||||
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| Live album by | ||||
| Released | May 1996 | |||
| Recorded | January 3, 1996 | |||
| Venue | Blues Alley, Georgetown, Washington, D.C. | |||
| Genre | Blues, jazz, folk | |||
| Length | 57:21 | |||
| Label | Eva Music | |||
| Producer | Eva Cassidy, Chris Biondo | |||
| Eva Cassidy chronology | ||||
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Live at Blues Alley is an album by American singer Eva Cassidy, originally self-released in May 1996. The album was recorded live at the Blues Alley nightclub in January 1996. It was the last album recorded by Cassidy before her death in November 1996.
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Unable to interest a major label in recording her music, Cassidy cashed in a small pension she had accumulated while working at her day job in a plant nursery to self-fund this recording of herself and her live band, comprising Lenny Williams (piano), Keith Grimes (guitar), Chris Biondo (bass) and Raice McLeod (drums), with Cassidy herself supplying vocals and acoustic guitar. The Blues Alley venue was booked for two nights, January 2 and 3, 1996, however on the first night technical issues prevented the tapes being any use so all of the recorded material used originates from the second, Wednesday night's performance. Cassidy was suffering from a light cold through both shows and initially felt that the performances were not good enough to release, but eventually agreed after a previously completed studio take of "Oh, Had I a Golden Thread" was added to round out the package.
This was Cassidy's last release in her lifetime, but the beginning of her posthumous rise to fame. She died of melanoma six months after it was released, ten months after it was recorded.
Video recordings of a number of the same performances, virtually the sum of her recorded video legacy, were later released on DVD as Eva Cassidy Sings, and again (with slightly different track selection) on the DVD portion of the 2-CD + 1-DVD 2015 compilation Nightbird , of which the audio CDs include remixed versions of the songs from Live at Blues Alley as well as 19 additional tracks from the same concert, a subset of which had previously also been included on other posthumous Cassidy releases.
Live at Blues Alley serves as an example of Cassidy's eclectic tastes, covering classic and contemporary artists from Billie Holiday to Sting, including Al Green, Pete Seeger, Irving Berlin and more. Her cover of "Fields of Gold" was a popular radio song and record companies used it to promote her material; in 2001 Michelle Kwan skated to the music of Eva's version of this song. [1] "What a Wonderful World", the last song she ever performed live, retains one of the introductions that was not edited out, in which she dedicates the song to her parents. [2] "Golden Thread", by Pete Seeger, was declared by Eva to be her favorite song in the album's liner notes and the song she felt had turned out the best on the album. It was not actually performed at Blues Alley but was recorded months earlier. [3]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [4] |
The album inspired attention from audiences outside of her local following in Washington D.C. [5] Before and during the album's recording, Cassidy suffered many physical health problems, whose causes, at the time, were unknown. Three months after the album was released, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. [6] Unfortunately, she died three months later without experiencing her burgeoning musical career. [7] "Her posthumous success," writes William Cooper, "has been astonishing, with worldwide critical acclaim and extensive exposure on British television that helped her album Songbird climb to number one on the British album chart in March, 2001." [5]
| Chart | Peak [8] position |
|---|---|
| Swedish Albums Chart | 19 |
| Danish Albums Chart | 29 |
| UK Albums Chart | 86 [9] |
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American singer and guitarist known for her interpretations of jazz, folk, and blues music, sung with a powerful, emotive soprano voice. In 1992, she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by the 1996 live solo album titled Live at Blues Alley. Although she had been honored by the Washington Area Music Association, she was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C. at the time of her death from melanoma at the age of 33 in 1996.
"Over the Rainbow" is a ballad by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harburg. It was written for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, in which it was sung by actress Judy Garland in her starring role as Dorothy Gale. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became Garland's signature song.
Eva by Heart is the first solo studio album by American singer Eva Cassidy. It was released in 1997, a year after Cassidy's death.
Songbird is a compilation album of songs by American singer Eva Cassidy. It was released through Blix Street on May 19, 1998, two years after her death in 1996.
Time After Time is a studio album by the American singer Eva Cassidy, released in 2000, four years after her death in 1996.
Method Actor is an eponymous album of the band Method Actor released in 1988 featuring American singer Eva Cassidy. It was unofficially re-released on CD in 2002.
American Tune is an album of rehearsal tapes and live recordings by American singer Eva Cassidy, released in 2003, seven years after her death in 1996. It was her second album of mainly live material and her third posthumous album. American Tune spent five weeks on the U.S. Billboard Top 200, and was a UK number one album.
Wonderful World is a compilation album by American singer Eva Cassidy, released in 2004, eight years after her death in 1996..
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking".
The Other Side is an album by the American go-go funk musician Chuck Brown and American singer Eva Cassidy. It was first released in 1992 by Brown's label Liaison records. The album comprises jazz, blues and soul standards and contains a mixture of solos and duets. It is the only studio album by Cassidy to have been released in her lifetime.
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Mary Ann Redmond is an American singer known for her soulful and wide-ranging vocal style in popular and jazz music. She is based in the greater metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, but has performed in several locations in the United States and in other countries. Both her live performances and her five CDs to date have earned her acclaim from audiences and recognition from the music industry, although she has never achieved national fame on a par with many of the performers she has worked with, such as Mary Chapin Carpenter. She is primarily a regional artist and has won 24 Washington Area Music Awards (Wammies).
Somewhere is the title of Eva Cassidy's seventh posthumous album and the fourth studio album, twelve years after her death in 1996. For the first time, it includes two songs written by Eva Cassidy herself.
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" is a folk song originally written by American singer-songwriter Pete Seeger in 1955. Inspired lyrically by the traditional Cossack folk song "Koloda-Duda", Seeger borrowed an Irish melody for the music, and published the first three verses in Sing Out! magazine. Additional verses were added in May 1960 by Joe Hickerson, who turned it into a circular song. Its rhetorical "where?" and meditation on death place the song in the ubi sunt tradition. In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the "Top 20 Political Songs".
Sara Katherine Wooldridge, known professionally as Sara K., is an American singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist. She withdrew from the music business in 2009.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Grace Bernadette Griffith was a folk and Celtic singer based in Washington, D.C. She has been honored with multiple Wammie awards by the Washington Area Music Association. In 1998, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Griffith died at the age of 64 following complications from Parkinson's disease on June 5, 2021.
The Union Boys was an American folk music group, formed impromptu in 1944, to record several songs on an album called Songs for Victory: Music for Political Action. Its "all-star leftist" members were Josh White, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Tom Glazer.
Simply Eva is the eighth posthumous album by Eva Cassidy, released on 25 January 2011, fifteen years after her death in 1996. It's a collection of 11 acoustic tracks with Cassidy herself on the guitar and an a cappella version of "I Know You By Heart". The Blues Alley version of "Over the Rainbow", which was not included in the Live at Blues Alley album, is on this album. Digital downloads include the Christmas single "Silent Night" as a bonus track. Simply Eva hit #4 on the UK Charts on February 13, 2011, and was certified silver and gold on February 18, 2011. The album debuted at #52 on the Canadian Albums Chart.
Nightbird is a 2-CD plus 1-DVD live album by American singer Eva Cassidy, released posthumously in November 2015, nineteen years after her death. The album was recorded at the Blues Alley club in Washington, D.C. in January 1996. Some of the tracks had previously been released on the 1996 album, Live at Blues Alley. The recordings have been remixed and remastered from the original tapes. Of the 31 songs, 12 are previously unreleased, including the title track "Nightbird", as well as the jazz standards "It Don't Mean a Thing " and "Fever". Of the 12 unreleased tracks, eight are previously unheard songs. The DVD which accompanies the 2 audio CDs contains 12 songs from the same set, of which 9 were previously included on the 2004 DVD release Eva Cassidy Sings and the remaining 3 are released for the first time.
