Early Morning Rain
Eva Cassidy Lyrics
In the early morning rain with a dollar in my hand
And an aching in my heart and my pockets full of sand
I'm a long way from home and I miss my loved ones so
In the early morning rain with no place to go
Out on runway number nine big seven-o-seven set to go
But I'm stuck here on the ground where the cold winds blow
You can't jump on a jet plane like you can a freight train
So I'd best be on my way in the early morning rain
She's away and westward bound far above my home she'll fly
Where the morning rain don't fall and the sun always shines
She'll be flying next my home in about three hours time
In the early morning rain with a dollar in my hand
And an aching in my heart and my pockets full of sand
I'm a long way from home and I miss my loved ones so
In the early morning rain with no place to go
In the early morning rain with no place to go
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Gordon Lightfoot
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Eva Marie Cassidy (February 2, 1963 in Washington, DC – November 2, 1996 in Bowie, Maryland) was an American vocalist described by the British newspaper The Guardian as "one of the greatest voices of her generation." She had a diverse repertoire of jazz, blues, folk, gospel and pop. Cassidy remained virtually unknown outside of her native Washington, DC, when she died of melanoma (which had spread to her bones) in 1996. Her posthumously released recordings have since sold in excess of four million copies Read Full BioEva Marie Cassidy (February 2, 1963 in Washington, DC – November 2, 1996 in Bowie, Maryland) was an American vocalist described by the British newspaper The Guardian as "one of the greatest voices of her generation." She had a diverse repertoire of jazz, blues, folk, gospel and pop. Cassidy remained virtually unknown outside of her native Washington, DC, when she died of melanoma (which had spread to her bones) in 1996. Her posthumously released recordings have since sold in excess of four million copies, and in early 2001 the compilation album Songbird reached #1 on the UK album charts.
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.
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.
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John Quill Taylor
@dnmurphy48 I'm not a musician nor am I a singer, and Lord Knows I cannot sing even a single note (on key, anyway), but I find Eva Cassidy's voice to be enchanting. As an engineer, I do understand mathematics and harmonics and just a little bit about Jazz and Blues musical notes and scales, and upon first hearing her, I believed that this woman, Eva Cassidy, indeed had a very special voice.
I understand your reaction, in that there are cases in which an artist or musician dies young, or tragically (or both!), and in so doing, seemingly becomes famous. In my own case, I adored Eva Cassidy's voice when I first heard it, and it was over a few years later that she died, at only age thirty-three. And when she died, it was during an autumn in which I was age thirty-eight and in the midst of dealing with the end of a long-distance, whirlwind of a relationship, amidst my own health problems that have existed since I was a teenager, and continue to this day such that, as I look back now at age sixty-three, I think I knew even at the time it would (probably) be my last relationship. I did not 'discover' her after she died, but did her tragic end increase my adoration and appreciation of her voice? I'm guilty as charged, I suppose.
Therefore, while I did actually hear and love her voice in what was to be the last few years of her life, before I even knew she was ill, it would be easy for anyone to categorize me as being part of that crowd that only purchases the recording AFTER the tragedy of her early death. But I assure you, I discovered her voice BEFORE the sadness of her early death, and before National Public Radio (Stateside) and BBC-2 (in the UK) and the "Songbird" release (which occurred nearly a full year-and-a-half after she died) later made her "famous."
Upon first hearing Cassidy, it took me a while to sense Eva's vocal range and her capability, which she almost seemed to keep deeply hidden, and at first I wasn't even sure whether she was a soprano who could 'dig deep' into the contralto range, or whether she was a mezzo soprano who could occasionally reach both 'up' and 'down' and occasionally do so as necessary. Again, I am not a musician!
But it is not her range or classification that gives Cassidy her beautiful sound: I think it is her ability to find those 'in-between' notes, those often-magical frequencies that lie at a special place in what I might call 'within the interstices' of the notes that typically make up usual musical scale. Cassidy also possesses a powerful control over her breathing, and at times, when you are certain she should take another breath, out comes six or seven more notes and another whole verse of music. I don't even know what the musical term is for this, but not many singers have this extra lung power. Also very characteristic I think is the way Eva takes a familiar song and breaks up the syllables in her own unique way, with some use of what I believe is called "rubato," and yet it's this and something more.
Other singers who excel at this are Diana Krall, a popular Jazz Singer, as well as Erika Lewis, a phenomenal singer in the New Orleans Jazz Band, "Tuba Skinny." I think this vocal technique was also very well exemplified and used by the late J. J. Cale, as you could never tell how he might dissect or "chop up" the syllables of a verse in classic songs of his such as "After Midnight" or "Call Me the Breeze," and it seemed as though you never knew just when he might begin and end singing each word of each line in a song (even the band members often seemed surprised); but in the end, all of the vocal start-and-stop sequences and timings seem to allow the singer to finally arrive and to do so just in and on time!
And I am guessing that, possibly among other things, these are maybe just a few of the things others like myself are hearing, and why we like these singers so much; and yet maybe you aren't hearing these things or you hear them and don't find them quite as mesmerizing as we do. And that's okay, but I would implore you to give her voice a bit more of a chance to reach through to you.
The exquisite Eva Cassidy sings what I think is the "definitive version" (at least in English) of Autumn Leaves (English Lyrics by Johnny Mercer and Music by Joseph Kosma) which is probably more Jazz than Blues . . . https://youtu.be/xXBNlApwh0c and if Jazz of this nature is to your liking, also perhaps try Diana Krall. Also, before you give up on Eva, listen to her rendition of "Over the Rainbow" a few times, https://youtu.be/2rd8VktT8xY and see if it doesn't move you. I am confident that it will, if you allow it to do so: it may take three or four honest attempts on your part, so give it a try, and see what you think. - j q t -
Mark Sze Chai Chan
In the early mornin' rain
With a dollar in my hand
With an aching in my heart
And my pockets full of sand
I'm a long ways from home
And I missed my loved one so
In the early mornin' rain
With no place to go
Out on runway number nine
Big seven o seven set to go
Well I'm stuck here on the grass
Where the pavement never grows
Now the liquor tasted good
And the women all were fast
There she goes my friend
She'll be rolling down at last
Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver wing on high
She's away and westward bound
Far above the clouds she'll fly
Where the mornin' rain don't fall
And the sun always shines
She'll be flying over my home
In about three hours time
This ol' airport's got me down
It's no earthly good to me
And I'm stuck here on the ground
As cold and drunk as I can be
You can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain
You can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain
xpcrooser
It never fails to stagger me the number of know all armchair critics rubbishing Eva's brilliant artistic interpretations of well known songs. Great in all genres,perfect pitch, intuitive timing,as well as being a competent guitarist.
So ,if you feel you prefer other versions with less imagination, Just bug off and leave the rest of us to bask in her brilliance
Dixie Normous
@theID2 You're just trolling.
theID2
@J i understand your ignore (ance). you are definitely entitled to be as ignorant as you are. but you're wrong about my "self enabled superiority". it was bestowed upon me, just as ignorance was bestowed upon you.
wayne
Go figure! Anyone who's ever picked up a guitar, or sang a bit, or tried both at the same time......well, patting your head and rubbing your stomach in a circular motion is an absolute fraction of what this woman could do, and so beautifully and bang on timings too.
Keri Johnson
I can’t even imagine it! She is beyond brilliant, an old soul, masterful artist, interpreter, vocal control, guitarist… Voice and talent like hers don’t come along very often! The Brits got it right!
theID2
@Michael Orzolick that's cool. my argument is with the numbnutz who think she 'was' the best ever
jeff silverman
If there was ever anything sweeter than the sound of Eva Cassidy's voice, God kept it for himself.
Her Imminence The Supreme One God
There is no "himself," in speaks of GOD. I have never been selfish to keep sweeter things for MYSELF.
Yifan Wang
What a beautiful way to put it
pete stronach
jeff silverman what a great sentence.