Eva Cassidy was the third of four children born to Hugh and Barbara Cassidy. From an early age, she displayed artistic and musical talent. When she was nine years old, her father taught her to play the guitar, and she began to play and sing at family gatherings.
While a student at Bowie High School, she did sing with a local band, called Stonehenge, and received considerable praise.
At the age of eighteen, Cassidy began her professional career, singing and playing guitar in a Washington, D.C., area band, called Easy Street. This band performed in a variety of styles, at weddings, corporate parties, and pubs.
During the summer of 1983, Cassidy sang and played guitar, six days per week, at Wild World, in Maryland. Her brother Dan was also a member of this working band.
Throughout the 1980s, Cassidy worked with a number of other bands, including the soul and Motown-oriented band The Honeybees, and the techno-pop band Characters Without Names, later called Method Actor.
During this period, Cassidy also worked as a propagator at a plant nursery and as a furniture painter in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1986, she met (bassist and recording engineer) Chris Biondo, who encouraged her and helped her find work as a backup singer for various acts. In 1990, Biondo and Cassidy hired the so-called "Eva Cassidy Band", composed of Chris Biondo, Lenny Williams, Keith Grimes and Raice McLeod, and she began to perform frequently in the Washington area.
In 1992, Biondo played a tape of Cassidy's voice for Chuck Brown. Best known as the "Godfather of Go-go", Brown is also a jazz and blues vocalist. This led to the first commercial recording of Cassidy, the duet album with Chuck Brown, The Other Side; which featured performances of classic songs such as "Fever", Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" and Cassidy's signature tune "Over the Rainbow". The album was released and distributed by Liaison Records, the label that also released Brown's Go-go albums. The duet CD attracted the attention of various record companies, but the offers all required Cassidy to pigeonhole herself within a single style (e.g., pop or jazz), something she adamantly refused to do.[citation needed]
In 1993 Eva Cassidy was first honored by the Washington area music community when she was awarded two Wammie awards for "Female Vocalist Roots/Traditional R&B" and "Vocalist Jazz/Traditional." The next year she was chosen to perform for the awards ceremony.
In January 1996, Cassidy recorded the album Live at Blues Alley, about which The Washington Post later commented that "she could sing anything and make it sound like the only music that mattered". [1] Cassidy was unhappy with her singing on the album, because she had a bad cold on the night of the recording; she began recording a studio album which was eventually released as Eva by Heart posthumously in 1997.
During a promotional event for the Live at Blues Alley CD in July 1996, Cassidy noticed an ache in her hips, which she attributed to stiffness from painting murals. The pain persisted, and, a few weeks later, Cassidy was diagnosed with melanoma. By the time of her diagnosis, the cancer had spread throughout her body. Cassidy's health rapidly deteriorated, and her final performance was in September 1996. At the performance, she had used a walker to reach the stage, sang "What a Wonderful World" in front of an audience of friends, and was subsequently admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital.[citation needed]
Eva Cassidy died on November 2, 1996, at the age of 33. She was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington Area Music Association.
Ain't No Sunshine
Eva Cassidy Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
It's not warm when he's away
Ain't no sunshine when he's gone
And he's always gone too long
Anytime he goes away
I wonder this time where he's gone
Wonder how long he's gonna stay
Ain't no sunshine when he's gone
And this house just ain't no home
Anytime he goes away
Well I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know
When he's gone
Always gone too long
Anytime he goes away
Anytime he goes away
Anytime he goes
Eva Cassidy's song 'Ain't No Sunshine' is an emotive and melancholic ballad about longing and loss. The repeated phrase 'Ain't no sunshine when he's gone' is a metaphorical expression of how love can fill our lives with warmth and light, but when that love is gone, our world becomes dark and cold. Cassidy's emotive rendition of the song through her soulful voice, accompanied by just a guitar, adds to the intensity of the lyrics, making the song resonate with the listener's own experiences of separation and absence.
The opening lines of the song - 'Ain't no sunshine when he's gone. It's not warm when he's away' - convey how the absence of love leaves us feeling alone and empty. The phrase 'and he's always gone too long' reinforces this sense of longing while the repeated line 'anytime he goes away' highlights the inevitability of separation. The song's focus on absence and heartbreak is represented in the lines 'And this house just ain't no home, anytime he goes away,' which captures the emotional effect of loss on the home and how often, what made it a 'home' in the first place is gone when love is gone.
Line by Line Meaning
Ain't no sunshine when he's gone
The atmosphere isn't the same when he's not around
It's not warm when he's away
The warmth, love, and comfort he brought are missing in his absence
Ain't no sunshine when he's gone
The brightness and happiness he brought seems to have disappeared as well
And he's always gone too long
He's never around as much as one would like him to be
Anytime he goes away
No matter how long he stays away or how many times he does it, it never gets easier
I wonder this time where he's gone
I'm curious and concerned about where he could be
Wonder how long he's gonna stay
I'm unsure of when he is going to come back, and that sense of uncertainty makes it hard to function
And this house just ain't no home
The place that used to bring comfort now feels empty without him here
Anytime he goes away
No matter how many times he leaves, it always brings a sense of emptiness and loss
Well I know, I know, I know, I know
I'm aware of the reality of the situation and how hard it is to live without him
When he's gone
The absence of him brings a sadness that is impossible to ignore
Always gone too long
No amount of time away feels right, it always feels like he's away too long
Anytime he goes away
Leaving is a consistent difficulty and brings a sense of loss every time it happens
Anytime he goes away
Closing the song with a repetition of just how hard it is every time he leaves
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Bill Withers
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@NueZeelundOutbakk
To imagine this is a live recording.
Most musicians would love to have this quality come from a studio session. This young lady set the bar so high...I just sit in awe and admiration. That she refused to sell her soul to the industy makes her all the more impressive. Pure art from a pure heart. God gifted us with 33 years of Eva.
@irenamoiseykina7724
And with many years of crying for her...
@NueZeelundOutbakk
@@irenamoiseykina7724 One would imagine. Such a promising future torn from her hands...or gently removed? Her legacy is awe inspiring. Her unknown talent to a larger audience makes her all the more compelling to me.
@irenamoiseykina7724
... "subtly" would be a better world here... @@NueZeelundOutbakk
@richardholmes5691
Gone wayyyyy too soon. Thank you for the many beautiful gifts you gave us, Eva. RIP
@kkfoto
R.I.P. Bill Withers 1938-2020
R.I.P. Eva Cassidy 1963-1996
Unforgettable artists
@TerlinguaTalkeetna
Without a doubt two very special humans
@garygrace8658
❤️🇬🇧
@kostanatsis8708
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@kostanatsis8708
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