Who is Eva Cassidy?

Posthumous success in the pop and rock worlds often happens - you only have to look at the industry behind Presley, Hendrix, (Jim) Morrison, Lennon, Cobain et al, to understand that, in pop terms, death sells in perpetuity. Occasionally, it extends a career beyond its mortal shelf life, but for most of the time it keeps, at very least, the concept of the iconic rock star well and truly alive. So who, then, you might justifiably ask, is Eva Cassidy? And why has her album, Songbird, been at the top of the charts for several weeks - almost five years after her death from cancer at the age of 33?

Born in 1963 in Washington DC, Eva Cassidy was the daughter of Hugh and Barbara. Both parents had an artistic background - her father, a special education tutor, dabbled in playing the bass and the cello, as well as sculpting; her mother comes from a family of craftsmen.

Showing a noted gift for art from an early age, Cassidy began to practice playing the guitar from the age of nine, her father teaching her the fundamental techniques as well as guiding her voice by forming a family ensemble group. From her teens, her twin passions were music and art (Georgia O'Keefe was a particular favourite), but she abandoned her visual art studies to work at a propagating plant at a nursery, which appealed to her strong, unconventional sense of spirituality.

Come the mid-1980s, still working at the nursery (and having little or no ambition to pursue a career in music full-time), she went to a Maryland recording studio to sing back-up vocals on a demo for a local band. "It was the middle of winter," recalls studio boss Chris Biondo, in the liner notes for Eva By Heart, a posthumously, locally, released album in 1997. "She was so insecure. I had to go out into the parking lot and coax her to come inside." Biondo was so impressed with her singing that he asked her to return so that he could record her as a soloist: "For the next eight months, she'd come by on her days off".

Soon, Cassidy was singing backing vocals in recording sessions for local musicians and bands. On a visit to Biondo's studio, Al Dale, the man responsible for booking entertainment for outdoor concerts in the National Parks, heard Cassidy sing on one of her sessions. From where he was sitting, however, he couldn't see her: "I was expecting a black woman," he says in the Eva By Heart sleeve notes. "But instead out came this blonde, blueeyed white lady. When I offered to help her with her career, she seemed astonished. The first thing she said was, `Why would anyone want to pay to hear me sing?' She had no idea how great she was."

An eponymous band was formed in 1990, leading her into the inevitable quagmire of the music industry. Dale effectively became her plugger, approaching various record labels with a view to signing a contract. While a refusal to compromise undoubtedly stymied her career at this point, another reason was her eclectic repertoire, which wove its way through jazz, blues, folk, pop, gospel and standards. Choosing songs which moved her, irrespective of category, discouraged record company A&R personnel to do the right thing. (Bruce Lundvall, president of Jazz and Classics for Capitol Records, reluctantly decided not to sign her to Blue Note; he later admitted that he passed on a brilliant career.)

Eventually giving up the hope of signing to even a moderately interested record label, Cassidy and her friends, Dale and Biondo, came to the conclusion that if the majors wouldn't come to them, then they would go to the majors. But first, a self-produced calling card had to be made available - a recording of a live gig at Georgetown's Blues Alley in January, 1996, was turned into Live At Blues Alley. Dale and Biondo were pleased with the results, but Cassidy wasn't and asked for the album not to be released.

Eventually, a compromise was reached - the live album could be released but only if she could immediately record a studio album. Eva By Heart was worked on when Cassidy herself knew her cancer (for which she was aggressively treated) was not going to disappear. Released posthumously, it is one of the few collections of recorded songs remaining by the singer.

So why the immense posthumous success? Is it collective remorse observed for an obviously tragic scenario? A cumulative jumping on the bandwagon? Or is it that Cassidy really was a woman with a once-off voice and artistic vision? The well-spring of sentimentality gushing forth will probably scupper any clearheaded critical evaluation for the present, but there's a notion bubbling up from all the emotion that she was a singer who liked singing a wide range of songs yet who was markedly unequipped with any true personal artistic vision. A good singer with no voice of her own.

By all accounts a complex person, sensitive to criticism and subject to seasonal depressions, extremely self-conscious, stubborn and unbending in her principles and values, Cassidy, according to those close to her, had few possessions and humble ambitions. With little sense of money, she was worried that potential material success would harm her guarded sense of identity. Songbird - a collection of tracks from Live At Blues Alley and Eva By Heart - at least gives her a framework by which she will be subsequently known. But, as Biondo told the Boston Globe in early 1999, Cassidy's music is "a finite musical entity".

Yet it's unlikely her story will go the way of a one-hit wonder. Biondo is the official chronicler of her legacy, while Boston DJ Robin Young, who broke Cassidy in the Boston area through regular, assertive playlisting on her morning show on WBOS-FM, has changed her views on the phenomenon of the singer. At first she thought her all-too-brief career was a tragedy. Now she reckons it was a miracle her voice was recorded at all. Eva Cassidy's passing is not a loss, she maintains. It's a gift.