I Can Only Be Me

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Two-time Emmy-winning producer/arranger William Ross, who created the album's "Autumn Leaves" track, said: "I can't possibly find the words to adequately express my thoughts and feelings about Eva, one of the most unique, hypnotic, and powerful singers of all time. In the original live recording, the only accompaniment is Eva herself playing the guitar, lightly brushing the strings in a continuous tremolo. For the orchestral version, strings replace the guitar, and the overlapping sustains and tremolos become a texture of forest murmurs.

Like everyone who listens to Eva’s voice, I’ve felt like I’ve gotten to know her as I’ve worked on the album,” explains Willis. There has also been continuing use of her arrangements and recordings on television talent shows such as The X Factor, The Voice, Masked Singer, American Idol, America’s Got Talent and Dancing With The Stars. Eva's lovely voice is veiled, this has lost the aliveness of her original recordings and the vinyl is quite noisy. Back in 2001, it was the BBC playing Cassidy's version of "Over the Rainbow" that introduced her to British audiences and ignited a media storm on both sides of the Atlantic.That album would spawn her now iconic version of "Over the Rainbow," which has been compared to Judy Garland's as a definitive performance of that treasured American classic. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. However I would strongly recommend and no doubt will become a demo disc for any system and hifi show!

Perhaps her hometown paper, the Washington Post said it best: "The saddest part of the mostly heartwarming story of singer Eva Cassidy is that she had to die to get the renown she deserved. I CAN ONLY BE ME, the album’s title track, is a radical reworking of a little-known song by Eva Cassidy’s musical hero, Stevie Wonder, while the album’s eight other tracks receive their own special reimagining.Surly some nice portraits of Eva could of been used, or save the cost and just provide some poly inner sleeves instead! When singer Eva Cassidy wandered into producer Chris Biondo's studio in Glenn Dale, Maryland to make extra money by singing on a band’s demo, she began an unprecedented journey that would lead to more than 12 million albums sold worldwide, largely posthumously.

When she passed away in 1996 from melanoma at the age of 33, she left behind a small catalogue of recorded material that has been painstakingly curated into more than a dozen individual collections that showcase her extraordinarily versatile voice and her wide-ranging, but unerringly tasteful, sense of material.Incredibly, Eva sounds as present and hypnotic within the sweeping orchestration as she did on her original acoustic take on the Fleetwood Mac favourite which she made entirely her own. Really don't understand the 45rpm issuing of this, as I find there is no sound stage, literally Eva is center and orchestra is coming directly out of left and right speakers.