The Therapy of Eva Cassidy

I realized today that I’ve been listening daily to Eva Cassidy’s performances since Bette died last November and especially when holidays like Mother’s Day and Passover prior this year reminded me of times past.

Who is Eva Cassidy?

The singer grew up and lived near Washington DC. She performed locally in little clubs, and tragically, cancer truncated her life thirty years ago when she was only 33 years old. Her repertoire consisted only of songs twith both melody and lyrics that moved her; gospel, jazz, pop, and country all. Commercial record companies at the time didn’t want to take her as an artist because she did not neatly fit into a musical niche. But they regretted it later. Shortly before Eva died, a CEO from one company that rejected her called and weeping, apologized for the worse decision of his career.

Here's why.

Years after Eva died, a couple of British radio jockeys got a recording of her singing the classic song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Profoundly moved, they aired it and Eva’s version immediately moved to number 1 on British airwaves. ABC’s Nightline heard about it and did a piece on her. Its piece went viral and had to be recast multiple times. Americans wanted to hear more of her music. I was moved too by hearing her recording of Over the Rainbow in 2001 and have been her fan ever since.

Take the time to see the Nightline piece below

Eva Cassidy, one of the greatest voices of the 20^th century, no has the exposure she deserved. A homemade record of her amazing last show, held at Washington DC’s Blues Alley only a few months before she died displays the depth of her talent. She not only suffered from cancer, but a cold. I can’t hear the effects of either in her soaring voice—she was that good.

Evas singing reminds me not to be sad over deaths of loved ones, but to focus instead on being grateful for my prior life with them as I move on—which I must for both myself and my family. Life continues. After all, I know you (Bette) “by heart,” as Cassidy sings, a tune well worth listening to for solace if you lost someone dear to you. Pay attention to the lyrics.

Maybe some of my readers will discover and enjoy Eva Cassidy from this post, which I wrote as a tribute to her for helping me through bad times and enriching me during good ones, thankfully arriving more often now through help of old and new friends and family. I may take a quiet day trip this summer to a lake where Eva’s ashes lie, and there, play a set of her music on my new little guitar I’ve bonded to. Maybe toss a rose into the lake.

I’ve visited the graves of authors and performers I culturally bonded to before, so this visit would not be my first. Thanking those that profoundly affect you, alive or dead, helps keep my ego at bay. This is good, I think.

Finally, “an alert” to end this post: In the future, I may spread out my posts to every other week. I’m finding it harder to come up with topics I want to write about. My psychologist advised me to write each week as emotional therapy, and it worked well to that end. I’m thinking of changing out the format a bit and have thought of serializing my novel Heartwood on it, one short chapter a week.

For those who have read Heartwood, I’ll add links and material that incorporate my research on the story, including; cometary impacts, plant communication, Charlie Parker jazz, Sephardic spirituality, the supernatural, how my family interacted with the Italian mob, and the amazing flight capability of great albatrosses.

If readers like it, I might after serialize a sequel, the plot line of which I’m fleshing out. Most readers of Heartwood who contacted me after wanted me to write a sequel to find out what happened to the character Emily.

Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Alexander Dumas, and more recently, Steven King, serialized novels, so I’d be in literary company far better than me.

Or maybe I’ll do something else to prompt my brain to find things to write about.

Don Siegel