@sbank: Spencer it is this album The smoke you see is my brain frying-- does your head get hot when you think? :)
regards,
PS: Ken Golden turned me onto this record.
Eva Cassiday Blew Me Away with her cover of Wayfaring Stranger....
It caught me by surprise to have my eyes already closed (because of work stress), sitting at my desk with a glass of bourbon. I was cleaning junk up and Wayfaring Stranger comes on by Eva Cassiday, and I had no idea for a moment who was singing the song. I was just listening without active listening.
Well, I was grooving to her movements on this and I thought her tone was big, warm and bold with gobs and gobs of soul. Wow. It woke me up from some stress to experience a moment. That's pretty great.
Is Eva Cassidy worth a deeper dive? I'm only superficially familiar with her and find her talented, if not a touch easy listening at times. I can dig that. Is her catalog diverse in sound scape and production?
At any rate, what a version of Wayfaring Stranger, and it just so happens to be a superb recording to boot!
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@dynamiclinearity Amen. It is why I ration the amount of time that I listen to her recordings. |
From Ted Gioia’s wonderful article (link below) on Eva:
"...For example, I sit in rapt admiration when I hear Cassidy sing the old folk ballad “Wayfaring Stranger”—which she turned into a soulful groove number. If you want to know how strange that decision was, listen to the way this song was originally sung. It’s one of the starkest traditional songs in the whole Anglo-American canon, and even though it has been updated, usually by country or folk singers, none of those versions even begins to prepare us for what Eva Cassidy achieves. I call particular attention to how she raises her ambitions and intensity with each passing chorus—and 3:40 into the performance you feel she can’t possibly lift the level of her singing any higher. But she reaches deep, deep inside and delivers something you have to hear to believe. It gives me chills to listen to this. But nobody talks about Eva Cassidy as a soul singer—and simply because there’s so much else she does, you could miss a track like this. But don’t."
Here is the conclusion of his piece... "But in a way she did achieve that somewhere over the rainbow—that place where, as the lyrics promise, “the dreams you dare to dream come true.” Her songs have given her the kind of immortality that Shakespeare and Villon and the poets have written about, and which only art confers. We benefit from it, even if she didn’t. And still do after twenty-five years. I just wish she was here to see how it all turned out."
Read the entire article here: The Tragedy Of Eva Cassidy - Ted Giola BTW - Ted has a terrific newsletter on music and arts. Well worth the subscription cost. Additionally....Don’t miss the ABC Nightline program on Eva and much more detailed in this link to an earlier discussion on this forum. |
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