Eva Cassidy Live At Blues Alley 1996

Eva Cassidy's Live At Blues Alley from 1996 is a wonderful record featuring Cassidy's fine band as well as her magnificent vocals. Something of a folk-jazz-pop hybrid, Cassidy's song selection is impeccable, and she invests herself fully in every song, and in the process, gives unique  and stellar performances of classics such as Stormy Monday, Bridge Over Troubled Water, People Get Ready, and Take Me To The River. Her version of Tall Trees In Georgia is achingly beautiful, and the studio version of Oh, Had I A Golden Thread added to the end of the record is breathtaking.

She had an amazing voice, full of emotional gravitas, and pitch-perfect to boot. The arrangements are quite good, and the band, if not all-stars, plays with style and professionalism. It is a CD you should own if you're into the plethora of jazz-pop chanteuses available these days. It is special good.

Then tragedy struck, when 2 months after the CD came out, she died at age 33 of melanoma. 

Her family and producer-bassist Chris Biondo then released Eva By Heart in 1997, a studio record that contains songs that had been mostly, if not fully, completed by Cassidy before her death. It's pretty good, but does not contain the perfect set of songs found on Live At Blues Alley, and some of them sound more like demos than competed projects.

The compilation Songbird, released in 1998, contains tracks from Blues Alley, Eva By Heart, and her signature Over The Rainbow from her 1992 duets record with pianist Chuck Brown, The Other Side. Like most decent compilations, it is a good record, and rivals Blues Alley as the one to have if you only have one.

Since 2000, her family has worked hard to tarnish her beautiful image by releasing every speck of recorded material they could find. Some of it is not bad, and there was probably a decent live CD to be found in the recordings made at Pearl's, King Of France Tavern, and the left-overs from the Blues Alley sets. But instead they doled out those tracks, mixed with demos and toss-offs, over the course of no less than five CDs and two more compilations from 2000-2012. The woman who completed two CDs in her lifetime (Live At Blues Alley and The Other Side with Chuck Brown) now has no less than six additional original CDs and three compilations all released after her untimely death. Only Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley have had more posthumous releases. So shame on her family for bilking the public that fell in love with their daughter with second-rate material over the course of the last decade.

Live At Blues Alley is indispensable. Songbird is a fine collection. After that, caveat emptor.