Canter Bridge

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Eva Cassidy’s tenacious and largely posthumous fan base makes it precarious to risk saying anything negative about the late singer. Fortunately, there is virtually nothing negative to say.

The remarkable part of this story is that her voice remained largely undiscovered until after her death at 33. One wonders how she would have coped with the adulation that is now a predictable response to her easy, soulful, textured voice.

The pictures of the artist on the cd’s insert suggest a kind of authentic humility that might have carried her far into a successful career as the same Eva that her D.C. club fans loved.

A wine critic – his inventory of adjectives thick with descriptives that seem almost nonsensical to amateurs – might have faced a challenge if asked to describe Eva’s voice. Words come up short, though her music is – to probe at a few possibilities – ‘simple’, ‘easy’, ‘unembellished’, ‘sure of itself’, ‘restrained’.

But this is to describe love as the collision of molecules.

Not an accomplished songwriter, Ms Cassidy exercised an astonishing ability to transform a song into a form almost unrecognizable when placed alongside the original, yet without asking the song to give up its soul. ‘Kathy’s Song’, written by Paul Simon, and the Cyndi Lauper tune ‘Time After Time’ are two cases in point.

Especially in the latter, it is possible to begin to imagine that Lauper’s performance is a derivative, dance-beat, and inferior version of an Eva Cassidy original performance. This is absurd, of course, yet one way of coming to grips with Cassidy’s authenticity.

One very clinical question must be asked of our response to a deceased artist’s work: Would we celebrate it so if she were not gone, her death pulling sentimentally upon our better judgment?

In Cassidy’s case, I believe we would feel just as keenly that she has touched our heart with her voice. One wonders why her breakout did not precede her death.

Regardless, we have her albums now.

We’re the richer for it.