Eva Cassidy is one of our most popular 2CH artists and yet her story is both unusual and tragic.  All her hit songs became popular after her death.

Eva Cassidy is one of our most popular 2CH artists and yet her story is both unusual and tragic.  All her hit songs became popular after her death.

After Eva’s death, folk singer Grace Griffith introduced a recoding she made at Blues Alley to Bill Straw from her label, Blix Street Records. Straw approached the Cassidy family to put together a new album. In 1998, a compilation of tracks from Eva's three released recordings was assembled into the CD Songbird. This CD lingered in relative obscurity for two years until being given airplay by Terry Wogan on his wide-reaching BBC Radio 2 show Wake Up to Wogan, following recommendation by his producer Paul Walters. The album sold more than 100,000 copies in the following months. The New York Times spoke of her "silken soprano voice with a wide and seemingly effortless range, unerring pitch and a gift for phrasing that at times was heart-stoppingly eloquent.”

Before Christmas of 2000, Top Of The Pops 2 aired a video of Eva performing "Over the Rainbow", which resulted in Songbird climbing steadily up the UK charts over the next few weeks. Just as ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald aired a feature on Cassidy, the album topped the chart. Shot at Blues Alley by a friend with a camcorder the same night the album was recorded, the black-and-white video became the most requested video ever shown on Top Of The Pops 2.

The black-and-white camcorder recording of "Over the Rainbow" as shown on Top of the Pops 2 Jazz critic Ted Gioia who wrote, "you might be tempted to write off the 'Cassidy sensation'  as a response to the sad story of the singer's abbreviated life rather than as a measure of her artistry. But don't be mistaken, Eva was a huge talent, whose obscurity during her lifetime was almost as much a tragedy as her early death.” Songbird has since achieved significant chart success throughout Europe and Australia and six times platinum status in the UK. Although still relatively unknown in the United States at that time, the album would eventually be certified gold in the U.S. as well.

Since Songbird, several other CDs with original material have been released: Time After Time (2000), Imagine (2002) and American Tune (2003). 2008 saw the release of another new album entitled ‘Somewhere’. Unlike previous albums, which consisted solely of cover songs, this release contains two original songs co-written by Cassidy.

Together with word of mouth and internet fansites, the role of online commerce has played a big part in Cassidy's success. This point was further affirmed when in 2005, Amazon.com released a list of its top 25 best-selling musicians, which placed Cassidy in 5th position, behind The Beatles, U2, Norah Jones and Diana Krall, and far ahead of Elvis Presley and several other well-known stars.

In 2004, during the gala opening of the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts, the Bowie Regional Arts Vision Association, Inc. (BRAVA) dedicated the Star's Dressing Room to Eva. Following a moving tribute to Eva, Chuck Brown took to the stage and performed his duet "with" Eva as her photos and video appeared in the background.

Cassidy died at her family home in Bowie, November 2, 1996, at the age of 33. She was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington Area Music Association. In accordance with her wishes, Eva’s body was cremated. Her ashes were scattered on the lake shores of St. Mary's River Watershed Park, a nature reserve near California, Maryland.