London — During her lifetime, Eva Cassidy was little known outside a circle of Washington, D.C., area musicians and fans.
Now, five years after her death, Cassidy's haunting voice has sent her "Songbird" soaring up the British album charts at No. 1 on Sunday, up from No. 10 two weeks earlier.
"It's a nice little vindication that cream rises to the top," her father, Hugh, said from the family home in Bowie, Md. "I think she had a way with lyrics, and a way with getting a song across that touched people and gave a lot of hope."
Paul Walters, senior producer of the morning show on BBC Radio Two, is claiming some of the credit for bringing posthumous fame to Cassidy, who died of cancer in 1996 at age 33. He said a friend brought him one of her CDs from New York in mid-1999, and it "bowled him over."
Walters put her version of "Over the Rainbow" into the program lineup, and the song generated intense excitement. "The phones and the e-mail and everything went absolutely mad," he said. "Everybody wanted to know where they could get hold of this sensational voice."
He calls Cassidy's voice "as distinctive as Karen Carpenter or Barbra Streisand."
But record sales had to wait for a deal with Los Angeles-based Blix Street Records to distribute Cassidy's music in Britain.
Even after that, Walters thought sales would level off at the 60,000 mark. But last fall, a producer for BBC-TV's "Top of the Pops" aired an old video of Cassidy performing "Over the Rainbow" at Blues Alley, a Washington club. The image of the blonde waif playing guitar and claiming a Judy Garland classic as her own once again triggered excitement, and sales have skyrocketed in Britain.
Hugh Cassidy isn't surprised at the emotional reaction his daughter's music stirs in people, which he learns about from letters fans write to the family. He said many share that they've lost a loved one.
"I'm sad for them," he said. "And I can relate with them, and I think that's why they open up. And I'm glad they find solace in Eva's music. That's a great comfort to us, as well."
"Songbird" has had excellent sales in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but Walters isn't sure that Cassidy's album and a later release, "Time After Time," will muster similar levels of success in the United States.
The lack of a publicity focus and the fact that Cassidy is no longer around to promote her own work could prove too much of a handicap in such a vast and splintered market, he said.
Still, Walters said there was a sense of inevitability about the album's success.
"These are real songs, sung by a really good singer. Nobody could keep it down. It had to win in the end."
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