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.
Woodstock
Eva Cassidy Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
He was walking along the road
And I asked him tell me where are you going
This he told me said
I'm going down to Yasgur's farm
Gonna join in a rock 'n' roll band
Got to get back to the land
And get my soul free
We're golden
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Can I walk along beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel like I'm a part of something
Turning round and round
And maybe it's the time of year
Maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning
We are stardust
We're golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was the song
And the celebration
And I dreamed I saw
The bomber jet planes fly
Fire a shot into the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
We're golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
The Eva Cassidy's rendition of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock tells the story of a chance encounter with a "child of God" who is on his way to Yasgur's farm to join a rock and roll band, and to get back to the land to get his soul free. The singer then asks if she can walk beside him, and says that she has come to lose the smog and feels like she's a part of something turning round and round. She wonders if it's the time of year or the time of man, and acknowledges that she doesn't know who she is yet. However, life is for learning, and the journey to recapture the essence of Woodstock, the garden, is essential for enlightenment.
The song then transitions into the story of the historic festival. Eva Cassidy sings about "the half a million strong" crowd and how "everywhere was a song and celebration." Then, she has a dream that she saw bomber jet planes fly and fire shots into the sky, which turned into butterflies above the nation. Through the entire song, the key message is that we're all stardust, and we need to get back to our roots, to the garden to find ourselves and rediscover our souls.
Overall, Eva Cassidy's rendition of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock carries a message of hope and an invitation to reconnect with nature and our fellow human beings. The song's key message is universal, urging the listener to leave the polluted, frenetic world behind and join a new community, reminiscent of the communal spirit of Woodstock.
Line by Line Meaning
I came upon a child of God
I stumbled upon a person who was pure and good
He was walking along the road
He was on a journey through life
And I asked him tell me where are you going
I asked him where his journey was taking him
This he told me said
This is what he replied
I'm going down to Yasgur's farm
I'm heading to a farm owned by Yasgur
Gonna join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to join a band and play rock 'n' roll music
Got to get back to the land
I need to return to nature
And get my soul free
I need to find freedom for my soul
We are stardust
We are all made of the same cosmic material
We're golden
We are pure and valuable
And we got to get ourselves
We need to find a way to become better versions of ourselves
Back to the garden
Back to the natural world where we came from
Can I walk along beside you
Can I join you on your journey
I have come here to lose the smog
I have come to escape the pollution and confusion of modern life
And I feel like I'm a part of something
I feel connected to a greater purpose
Turning round and round
Everything is constantly changing
And maybe it's the time of year
Perhaps it is the season for change
Maybe it's the time of man
Perhaps it is the era for change
And I don't know who I am
I am still searching for my identity
But life is for learning
But every experience teaches us something
By the time we got to Woodstock
When we arrived at Woodstock
We were half a million strong
We were a large and united group
And everywhere was the song
Music was playing everywhere
And the celebration
And we were all celebrating
And I dreamed I saw
And in my dream I saw
The bomber jet planes fly
Military planes flying over
Fire a shot into the sky
Firing their weapons into the air
Turning into butterflies
Magically transforming into peaceful creatures
Above our nation
Hovering over our country
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, RESERVOIR MEDIA MANAGEMENT INC
Written by: Joni Mitchell
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Göran Lindh
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him "Tell me where are you going?"
This he told me
"I'm going down to Yasgur's farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land
And get my soul free"
We are stardust, we're golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
Can I walk along beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel like I'm a part
Of something turning round and round
And maybe it's the time of year
Maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning ...
We are stardust, we're golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was the song
And the celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation ...
We are stardust, we're golden
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
asanissimasaa
Joni Mitchell is the greatest musical artist of “my time” but this achingly beautiful version of Woodstock by Eva Cassidy surpasses any I’ve ever heard, including Joni’s. (Of course, the song itself came from Joni’s soul.)
Michael Knaly
I was lucky to have grown up in Bowie, MD with Eva. Remember her sitting in that big gazebo on her family property strumming and singing. Saw her perform w her high school band. They covered alot of Yes and other progressive rock. Her doing Kansas - Dust in the Wind still blows my mind 38 years later!!!
SuperJoseco
Karen Carpenter is also amazing. She doesn't have the same voice range, but her voice is beautiful. They were taken somewhere else in the universe, for other beings to enjoy their fantastic voices. They were only lended to us only for a while. The universal demand is huge.
Donna Vorbach
You were blessed to know an Angel.
Bern of Thule
I bet she is still sit there with her guitar, smiling and singing.
SuperJoseco
She will always be the best. She will always stay alive.
Prairie Dan
@Michael Knaly Michael, these are incredible memories to treasure. Guess I'm a late convert as am still finding it hard to grasp what a unique talent Eva was. Her live version of Joni's song is quite staggering in its ethereal power and beauty.
Allan Payne
Aside from her amazing voice, no one, and I mean no one, can match her song interpretation, and that's true of every song I've heard her sing.
Larry Power
Absolutely.
Daylark
Yes!