‘Songbird’ Sings for Eva Cassidy

Eva Cassidy, the Washington songbird who couldn’t land a record contract during her lifetime, currently has the No. 1 album in England.

“Songbird,” a compilation drawn from Cassidy’s first three independently released albums, has sold more than a million copies there, platinum success made bittersweet by the fact that it comes 4 1/2 years after her death from cancer at age 33.

An astonishingly versatile singer comfortable in almost any musical genre and blessed with an ability to transform others’ material into her own--even the signature songs of more famous vocalists--Cassidy would have been as shocked as anyone at this turn of events.

After all, in her lifetime, she was unknown outside Washington, and little known even here. Immensely shy and generally discomfited by public performance, Cassidy simply wanted to sing songs that spoke to her own hopes and aspirations.

In England, she’s become the focus of media coverage that may soon extend to the United States: Several network news shows are preparing features on Cassidy, as is People magazine. Earlier this year, Cassidy appeared on the cover of Billboard when that industry bible took note of her late-blooming commercial breakthrough.

“Eva would have been pleased, but with an ‘aw, shucks’ attitude,” says her father, Hugh Cassidy, a retired teacher and metal sculptor who lives in Bowie, Md., where Eva grew up. “She was learning to act gratified when given compliments, but . . . she was not a limelight figure.”

A remarkable posthumous career trajectory began barely a month after Cassidy’s death: She won 10 Washington Area Music Awards, including artist of the year and album of the year. That Wammie was for “Live at Blues Alley,” the only solo album released while Cassidy was alive.

Blix Street Records, a small, folk-oriented independent label based in Hollywood, gave wide release to the Blues Alley album as well as 1997’s “Eva by Heart” and 1998’s “Songbird” compilation, which included a key track from “The Other Side,” Cassidy’s 1992 jazz and soul collaboration with the venerable godfather of go-go, Chuck Brown.

That track was Cassidy’s solo reading of “Over the Rainbow,” the “Wizard of Oz” song seemingly owned by Judy Garland.

Enter Tony Bramwell, a childhood pal of George Harrison, later a Beatles road manager and, even later, one of England’s top record promoters. Martin Jennings, whose tiny independent label, Hot Records, leased Cassidy’s Blix Street albums in England and Australia, asked Bramwell to see what he could do for “Songbird.”

“I listened to it and totally fell in love with it,” Bramwell recalled recently from England. “I played it to a few people at BBC and Paul Walters, an old chum, came back and said ‘I love it.’ ”

Walters happens to be the senior producer of a popular morning show on the BBC’s Radio 2. “I hear stuff all the time, so I’m a hardened old cynic,” says Walters, “but this stopped me in my tracks. When I first heard Eva, I was absolutely stunned by the voice quality.”

So were BBC listeners when they heard “Over the Rainbow” last spring. The BBC was immediately flooded with hundreds of calls and e-mails begging for information on the unknown singer.

“People were desperate to know who it was, how they could get a copy,” Walters said. BBC listeners would subsequently vote Cassidy’s version of “Over the Rainbow” one of the top 100 songs of the century. Radio 2 did a one-hour Cassidy special, and by December “Songbird” had sold 250,000 copies in England.

Stateside, meanwhile, NPR’s “Morning Edition” produced a nine-minute feature on her in December. Suddenly, at Amazon.com, “Songbird” topped the best-sellers chart; “Live at Blues Alley” was No. 2; another posthumous release, “Time After Time,” No. 4; “The Other Side” No. 5; and “Eva by Heart” No. 7.

For Hugh Cassidy and his wife, Barbara, their daughter’s belated success is vindication of their belief in her talent.

“I want to do what I can to help things keep rolling along,” says Cassidy. “We’d like to now get airplay here and, seeing as she was No. 1 in England, maybe she’ll get that.”