All about Eva

[dw]

Just who is (or rather, was) this Eva Cassidy, anyway? Is there another posthumous success story to compare with hers?

[andy hughes]

Eva Cassidy was a solo singer from Maryland USA, she died from cancer in 1996 aged 33. In her lifetime, Eva enjoyed modest success as a singer - her output never really reached a massive audience, hindered in part by her own shyness, and the genuine belief that her talent was nothing special. Her success in the last year or so in this country has been entirely due to the airplay she has received on Radio Two. Her version of 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' has the added poignancy of the knowledge that she may well have known she was dying at the time she recorded it. Since her intial airplay on Terry Wogan's Breafast Show, her popularity spread to other presenters, inclduing Johnny Walker who played her material freaquently on his Drive-Time Show. Sales of Eva's album rose from a couple a week, to several thousand, from the British outlet for her work which was a mail-order firm in the south of England. Thanks to the interest shown here, Eva's music is now selling well back in her native USA. Posthumous success is nothing new in popular music - Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac Shakur, all sell far more now than they did they did when they were alive. The difference in Eva Cassidy's case is that she enjoyed little success while a living artist - it's taken over five years after her death for her work to be recognised on any major level.