In Maryland and Washington, where the singer Eva Cassidy lived and performed, her reputation has reached almost mythical proportions. The same is true in Britain, where Songbird, one of several posthumously released Cassidy albums, was No. 1 for a time last year. That four-year-old CD has since achieved gold-seller status in this country, too.
There are Web sites devoted to Cassidy's memory, a coffee-table biography by two British writers (not yet published in the United States), and talk of a movie based on her life. The small West Coast folk music label Blix Street Records has just released another album, Imagine, which for several weeks had been at or near the top of Amazon.com's pre-ordered list. This for an artist who toiled, as they say, in relative obscurity and whose recordings have gotten minimal radio play on this side of the Atlantic.
In some ways, the explanation for Eva Cassidy's popularity - all told, her records have sold about 4 million copies, according to Bill Straw, the president of Blix Street - is simple: She possessed a silken soprano voice with a wide and seemingly effortless range, unerring pitch and a gift for phrasing that at times was heart-stoppingly eloquent.
In an industry where not much is simple, however, Cassidy's celebrity and the success of her records qualify as aberrations.
For starters, Cassidy, who died of melanoma at 33 in late 1996, was by most accounts shy and acutely self-critical. She appeared in front of an audience with reluctance. "It embarrassed her if one of her friends asked her to sing at a party," said her father, Hugh Cassidy.
But if she waffled about taking the spotlight, Cassidy was firm about what she would and would not sing, insisting on performing only material that meant something to her. The result was an eclectic mix of standards, blues, rhythm and blues, folk, rock, country, jazz and gospel that in these days of musical pigeonholing almost guarantees a lack of serious interest from major record labels.
She lived to see just one of her solo albums released, a live session at the Washington club Blues Alley that she underwrote herself and sold locally from the trunk of her car. Typically, friends recall, she was at first reluctant to put it out.
Her final appearance was at an emotional farewell concert organized by her friends at a club in Georgetown. She was carried on stage and sang one song, "Wonderful World." Less than two months later, she died.
