AMERICAN TUNE -- THE SONGS



Author's Note: I would like to thank the following people for helping with this song-by-song discussion: Hugh Cassidy, Chris Biondo, Keith Grimes, Raice McLeod, Lenny Williams, Ruth Murphy, Celia Murphy, Bryan McCulley, Marcy Marxer, and Andrew Bowles.

Album cover "Drowning in a Sea of Love"

Eva's father, Hugh Cassidy, told me "I like the way the album starts off with a little impact!" This recording is from a full-band rehearsal tape, very bluesy, great stuff. If you listen carefully, you can hear the incomparable Lenny Williams playing "B-3" organ in this rendition. Guitarist Keith Grimes comments, "We used to do a lot of rhythm and blues songs like that. They haven't been represented to any great degree on the records, so I'm glad to see a song of that type on this record, it's something Eva did so well." Raice McLeod, the band's drummer for much of its history, remembers, "That was one of the songs that Eva was doing when I first hooked up with the band. That one really knocked me out! It's a little bit different from what people generally identify with her."


Album cover "True Colors"

Cyndi Lauper recorded this song, though she didn't write it, and Eva learned it from Lauper's album. "True Colors" was one of Eva's special favorites. "Eva liked it, she brought it in, taught us how to play it. We must have played that song a thousand times," says Chris Biondo. Keith adds, "As I told you in a previous interview, I always liked that arrangement of the song. This is from a rehearsal tape that has Jimmy Campbell on drums, so we must have been doing that pretty early on."

Eva's friend Ruth Murphy recalls, "I love that one, I remember her singing it at Fleetwoods when she dedicated it to her sister Margret. Eva rarely ever dedicated anything to anyone, because that would mean a lot more words for her to say at the microphone!"


Album cover "The Water is Wide"

Eva learned the folk song "The Water is Wide" from her father as a child. She encountered it again in junior high school in Mrs. Walter's chorus. Eva's friend Ruth Murphy remembers, "We sang that in school chorus together. Celia and I used to sing it with Eva, that was a fun one we would sing together just to harmonize." Ruth and Eva were both sopranos, and Celia sang alto.

Eva often included this song in her solo and duo performances. Hugh Cassidy comments, "I like her guitar work on 'The Water is Wide.' When we sang it at home, I think we didn't do it as slowly. She slowed it down, made it more telling. In her phrasing, she is so conscious of the visual images."

This rendition was taped at Pearl's in Annapolis, the same night as "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" from the album IMAGINE. Eva performed at the small storefront restaurant several times, and on two of these occasions her friend Bryan McCulley brought his video equipment along to tape Eva's performance. He plugged his equipment directly into Eva's soundboard to record the audio portion. Bryan's fortuitous recordings of those two nights at Pearl's, in September 1994, have preserved forever some of Eva's most beautiful vocal performances. Bryan told me once, "Eva never watched anything I videoed. We had a deal that I would never show it to her."


Album cover "Hallelujah I Love Him So"

Yes, Eva could be lighthearted and upbeat! Raice McLeod comments, "That's a fun song! We did that one quite often." This rendition comes from a band demo tape. According to Chris Biondo, "We played that directly onto a DAT, with the idea of making cassettes from it later, but we never got around to it. This version of the song is shortened by about half, we usually did an extra verse and instrumental break also."

Keith says, "That's an R&B song, but like all the Ray Charles stuff, it has some gospel influence. It was a little more raucous in a live situation, this is a more understated performance. Eva gives it a cool treatment that is still effective. Another Ray Charles one that we haven't found a good recording for is 'Get on the Right Track.' We also did this old song 'Let the Good Times Roll' that Ray Charles recorded, and 'Drown in My Own Tears.'" (Note: "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Drown in My Own Tears" are part of the duets album THE OTHER SIDE.)


Album cover "God Bless the Child"

Eva Cassidy fans who own the album THE OTHER SIDE have already heard Eva's first recording of this song. Here is an alternate version, from one of Keith's "buried treasure" rehearsal tapes. Keith says "We must have recorded that in the early days of the band. It also has Jimmy Campbell on drums."


Album cover "Dark-Eyed Molly"

This song was taped in the studio, with Eva's vocals and acoustic guitar, supplemented by Keith Grimes's electric guitar. In 2003, additional instrumentation was added by the multitalented Marcy Marxer -- including bouzouki and tin whistle. Marcy told me she had a lot of fun working on the song, and said "The vocals are amazing!" Eva and Marcy Marxer never had the opportunity to record together, but some of you may have read about how Marcy and Grace Griffith gave Eva great joy in her last weeks, by coming to visit and singing with her. What a precious gift of support and friendship.

Eva first heard "Dark Eyed Molly" when Fairport Convention performed it at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. Chris Biondo remembers, "Eva and I went with Eva's parents, her brother Dan, and Larry Melton. Dan knew the violin player, came up and talked to him after the show. They did that song. Eva started playing it live, did it a few times. Because Marcy Marxer is so versatile with the different Celtic instruments, Bill thought it would be a good idea to have her add whatever might be appropriate to make it more Celtic-authentic, because she had done so many nice things on Grace Griffith's record."


Album cover "American Tune"

"American Tune" has a long and interesting history. The melody can be traced back to the German composer Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612), who originally wrote it as a love song called "Mein Gmüth ist mir verwirret" ("My mind confuses me"). The tune was later transformed into a hymn with the lyrics "Herzlich thut mich verlangen" and later "O Haupt voll' Blut und Wunden." Johann Sebastian Bach borrowed the melody for his "St. Matthew Passion," where it can be heard five times at different points in the oratorio. Today the melody is still found in hymnals of many denominations, with the lyrics "Because All Men Are Brothers," among others. In 1973, Paul Simon continued the transformational life of the ancient tune when he penned the lyrics beginning "Many's the time I've been mistaken" and called his song "American Tune." Rolling Stone declared it to be the best song of that year!

Eva learned "American Tune" from her father, Hugh Cassidy. He comments, "We used to sing that in our family band, Dan and Eva and myself, along with 'Desperado' and quite a few others, in the early 1980s. To me, 'American Tune' is probably the best song on this album. The words lay out well, the way they hang upon the air. Eva's phrasing is a lot of what Eva's about, and when you put that together with her voice, her pacing, her style, her use of dynamics, you really have something beautiful. She always had that sensitiveness."

Blix Street's Bill Straw had three different versions of "American Tune" and was having a hard time deciding which one to select for the album. Ultimately he invited Grace Griffith to listen and decide. Grace did not hesitate in identifying the September 10th "Pearl's" version as the best of the three, and it is that recording you hear on the eponymous album.

"This recording makes the world a better place," declares Chris Biondo, who also says "'American Tune' may be one of the top five best things that have been on an Eva record, especially in this version. I think it's an amazing achievement that it is a live performance, with Eva both playing the guitar and singing it." Keith Grimes agrees: "When vocal songs are done with an instrumental group, there are benefits. For one thing, you get arranging possibilities that aren't available to a solo performer. But there's also something special that happens when one person, self-accompanied, puts a song across completely. Eva has a powerful gift for that. It's so fortunate that these solo performances were recorded."

Eva's friend Celia Murphy was in the audience at Pearl's that night, September 10th, 1994. "I really like that song, and I remember that Eva was really getting into it. But I kidded her about it afterwards, I said 'Eva, how come you never do the next verse?' She looked at me like 'What are you talking about?' It was one of those Eva stares. I sang her the next verse and she said, 'Oh.... yeah.' So one of the verses is missing." Chris Biondo comments, "Eva had a lot of lyrics to remember, if you think about it. She used to write them in a notebook, but she almost always sang from memory." The other two recordings of "American Tune" likewise do not contain the missing verse.

Someday I would love to interview Paul Simon about "American Tune"! I have read that he wrote the lyrics to express his disillusionment with the political situation in the United States, following the Watergate scandal.


Album cover "It Don't Mean a Thing" ("If It Ain't Got That Swing.")

This song was recorded at the Maryland Inn, the same night as "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" on the album IMAGINE. Violinist Bruno Nasta was sitting in with Eva, Keith Grimes and Chris Biondo. Keith comments, "It was a tune we didn't play all that much with the four-piece band. Usually we did it with 'Chuck and Eva,' with a bigger band. Eva liked it, she wanted to do it this particular night. That was the first time we did it without a drummer. We had Bruno [Nasta] with us, so we just jumped in there and tried to render it in a sort of 'Hot Club of France' version. That was one of the songs Eva did not play guitar on, so it was a very sparse instrumentation."


Album cover "Yesterday"

"Yesterday" was the only Beatles song Eva ever recorded. She had planned to record "Across the Universe" but never got the chance.

This recording of "Yesterday" was one of the early projects Eva recorded at Chris Biondo's studio in Rockville, in 1989. According to Chris, "We recorded 'Yesterday,' 'God Bless the Child,' and 'I Can Only Be Me' within a few weeks of one another. It usually took us a day to do each one. For 'Yesterday,' Lenny Williams came in to play the piano, Eva sang it, and on a later date she brought her brother Dan over to do the violin part. That was the first time I met Dan. He's a talented guy, and Eva was always very enthusiastic about her brother, thought he was the greatest."

In an earlier interview Chris had mentioned that this recording was marred by occasional sounds of a furnace turning on and off. He says "I'd like to retract that statement, it was another song that had the furnace sounds." (If any of you think you have heard them elsewhere, e-mail me your guess and I'll tell you if you're right!)

Pianist Lenny Williams comments, "I think that was the first session I did with Eva, we might have done that one and 'God Bless the Child' on the same day, but after all this time I'm not sure. I remember her drawing pictures, sketching faces of women with big eyes! We spent most of the time worrying about the pedals squeaking on Chris's piano, that was the focus of a lot of torment back then. He had this Kawai baby grand, and whenever you'd press the pedal it'd squeak, he couldn't stand recording it. It didn't bother me, I figured, 'It's a piano, it's gonna make some noise.' I don't think I had played the song before, of course I had grown up hearing it but I hadn't played it much, if at all."

Keith Grimes had never heard this recording before; it was made before the formation of the Eva Cassidy Band. He comments, "That's another song that's been recorded by a lot of people. Eva just marches in fearlessly and puts her own stamp on it."


Album cover "You Take My Breath Away"

Eva used to sing this beautiful song at weddings, including that of her friend Celia Murphy. Celia remembers, "I asked Eva if she would sing at our wedding, and she said she would be 'honored.' She asked me what I wanted her to sing, and I said I trusted her judgment. She later brought a tape over to to the house, and she played me a recording of her singing 'You Take My Breath Away.' It was slightly emotional for me. Eva said 'So, you like it?' I said yes, I did like it! Later on I played the tape for Winston [her fiance], and he got a little emotional, so we knew it was the right song. Originally Chris was going to play with her but he chickened out at the last minute, so it was just Eva and her guitar. It was May 9th, 1992. She was at the altar singing, it was almost like she was singing just to us, the wedding party. When she was singing, Winston got emotional, so I had to give him my hanky!" Winston adds, "It just made the service, I think. There was not a dry eye in the house. It was breathtakingly beautiful, it was fantastic."

Eva envisioned "You Take My Breath Away" as a music video, according to Chris Biondo. "She didn't want to be seen in the video, she wanted it to be images. She was thinking clouds, sunbeams cutting through the clouds, the song as the overwhelming spirituality of nature, that is what she was getting from that song. She thought that it was more of a spiritual song than a man-woman love thing, she thought that when the lyrics say 'I feel your eyes on me,' that there'd be a break in the clouds, and the sun would come through the clouds, and you see rays, like a creator looking down on earth, she wanted that image to be on the video."

Keith Grimes says this song is his favorite thing on the album. "In certain performances, Eva has a particular quality of soulfulness and delicacy that happens, an ineffable quality, it's a real fragile thing -- this is one of those, this has that going for it in a big way."

At least three versions exist of Eva singing "You Take My Breath Away." This rendition is from one of Keith's recently-discovered rehearsal tapes.

Claire Hamill, the singer-songwriter from England who wrote "You Take My Breath Away," tells us how she came to write the song:

'In 1972, at the age of 17, I toured America for the first time to promote my first album "One House Left Standing". During a break in the tour I visited a girl called Kay Vereen who lived in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. She introduced me to a lovely young man called Mike Marsh, whose parents owned a surf shop. I was enchanted by the whole surf scene, as it was a million miles away from my early life in the industrial North East of England. Mike and I fell in love, and I wrote many songs for him which feature on my second album "October." Most of the songs that I wrote at that time were written on my return to rainy London, where the busy streets soon had me dreaming of the warm Carolina beaches and Mike. I was 19 when I wrote "You Take My Breath Away". We corresponded for four years as we struggled to keep our transatlantic relationship alive, but inevitably the great distance came between us and it fizzled out. I think of the song as a tender declaration of love to someone I thought the world of.

"The first time I heard Eva sing I became a fan. When I heard her sing my song..., can you imagine how I felt, I was completely overwhelmed. so many different emotions flooded through me, the first was elation at the sheer beauty of her rendition quickly followed by the poignancy of the fact that I would never be able to tell her how fantastic it is.'


More about Claire Hamill: Her friend and webmaster, Christine Waters, sent me a scan of an article by Barry Dix in the Feltham Leader. Here are a few extracts: 'Musician Claire Hamill discovered one of her songs had helped take a CD to the top of the album charts on Sunday afternoon -- while she was attending a garden party in Feltham. ..."I'm flabbergasted," said Claire, who was "top of the bill" at the back garden concert staged by Christine and Charlie Waters, and featuring musicians from local folk clubs. Singer-songwriter Claire is no stranger to fame. In the early seventies, still in her teens, she was elevated to stardom, recording several successful albums, topping the bill at the Royal Festival Hall, and being featured on the cover of Melody Maker.

Claire said, "I was visiting an Eva Cassidy website a while ago and noticed she had recorded a song called 'You Take My Breath Away.' I wondered if it was mine of the same name, and contacted the record company. They confirmed it was but said they had no plans to release it. Then a few months ago they got in contact again and said it would be on the new album.... It's a real thrill. I'm so excited about it."

Christine Waters, who has set up Claire's new website, said "She deserves the success. She's been gigging around for years. She's a very talented performer and hopefully this will be a big boost for her career."'

UPDATE: Steve Massam of the BBC interviewed Claire Hamill in the fall of 2003. He asked her if she was making a lot of money from having her song on a hit album, and Claire replied, "Well, considering what I've been living on, it's a fortune to me, I hope I make some money, I certainly need it, in case anybody is wondering, but really the main thing for me is the beauty of the rendition, and that she loved my song. Not only that, but now I can ring people up and say 'Eva Cassidy loved my song...I am a good songwriter' and hopefully I'll be able to write for other people.... It's just the biggest thing that's happened to me, really. It's going to open so many doors."


Want to know more about AMERICAN TUNE? Visit the main AMERICAN TUNE page to read an overview and an interview with Keith Grimes, who discovered "buried treasure" in his basement. On AMERICAN TUNE page two, graphic designer Eileen White discusses her discovery of the photos and drawings used in the album's design. Page four will feature reviews of the album.