While researching my previous article on Eva Cassidy, I came across her beautiful cover of Paul Simon’s Kathy’s Song and was enamoured with it. It showcases her signature acoustic guitar fingerpicking and pure, emotive vocals. When I hear her voice, it’s as though a light surrounds it. There’s something angelic in its aesthetic and tone that I haven’t really heard in another singer.
Eva was blessed with such a wondrous and authentic voice and, when you consider her tragic passing at such a young age, it makes you wonder if she was sent down here to give us a fleeting glimpse of what heaven sounds like.
I agree with Arun Starkey, writing for Far Out, who opined that Cassidy’s version of Kathy’s Song could make a “strong claim to be better than the original“. She recorded the song on January 3, 1996, just ten months before her passing from melanoma on November 2, 1996, at the age of 33.
She was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C. area at the time of her death. Her music reached a global audience in late 2000 when BBC Radio 2 DJ Terry Wogan began playing her version of Over the Rainbow from the compilation album Songbird. Since then, her music has featured in countless films and continues to receive significant airplay.
Eva’s version of Kathy’s Song was released posthumously on Time After Time (2000), four years after her death in 1996.
Kathy’s Song was from Paul Simon’s 1965 debut album The Paul Simon Songbook and re-recorded for Simon & Garfunkel’s second album Sounds of Silence, released in 1966.
It has been described as one of Simon’s most personal songs; it is dedicated to Kathy Chitty, Simon’s girlfriend and muse during his mid-1960s sojourn in England.
References:
1. Kathy’s Song – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
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