I collect Autumn leaves, the only song I know how to play in the guitar,
Cassidy’s is the seventh, and the best one.
In fields of gold and over the rainbow…
there is a song in there about loving you as I never have before,
there are harps, chirping birds
and angels, I swear, singing in the background.
And she sings and does to me what needs to be done.
It is what we talk about, often,
beyond the politics, beyond the boundaries
it is Lawrence Welk and it is Mother Theresa
it is Bush and the oily C.E.Os
the republicans, the liberals,
the popular pubs, the smoking allowed,
the communisms,
the home-made, the pornographies,
the Ghandies and the Buddhas.
It is what religion is all about,
the expectation!
It is what we are all about,
the gospel and the song.
It is about mother and the common labor,
it is about the common ground…
Eva Cassidy was 33 years old when she died, in Baltimore, of cancer, in November of 1996. In this Guardian article about her music, Jim Farber, the author says:
“…Then there was the sheer sound of her soprano, graced by a tone as plush as fleece.”
For me, not trained in music but immersed in it, she is steady in her call and in the quality of her invitation. When I recently tried to understand again the notion of perfect pitch, I was naturally driven back to her voice. Calmness and deep pauses with occasional thrills of controlled, high and perfect emotion…
I wrote the words when I first discovered her, not quite sure when. Properly positioned in a much younger time-frame in my life, and while living here, in the States, near Baltimore, in Maryland. I do remember Eva Cassidy’s death, in retrospect. It had to do, vaguely, with the possible death of jazz, of the vibrancy and defiance of city neighborhoods, the hidden music that sustained us, in such a strange way in Buffalo, New York and later in Washington, D.C. Her death had to do with the loss of love and community.
I find the reference to Lawrence Welk poignant, reminiscent, and hilarious, and so very appropriate. Names could be replaced, and we could find ourselves happily, or not, in the many duels of 2023…
Her voice and her music though, stay! She is my calm muse and a reminder of an almost impossible beauty, forever available. Love and jazz also stay.
There is a story told that Sting cried when he heard Eva sing his Fields of Gold… It seems they never met, but he did comment about her singing his song.
And here are some of my many preferences for Autumn leaves…with Eva as the 7th. in music.
It starts in French and it moves directly into American jazz. The music was composed by Joseph Kosma, with lyrics by Jacques Prévert, and the song was included in Marcel Carné’s 1946 film Les Portes de la nuit (Gates of the Night).
#1 Edith Piaff
#2 Charles Aznavour - one of my favorites. Better when enjoyed without a full orchestra, but this song became an invitation to “full blindfolded romance”…
#3 Yves Montand
# 4 Nat King Cole
#5 Bill Evans
#6 Keith Jarrett !!! closer and closer, clear to me. Divine inspiration to stay open… and to know the theme is not ever the same, once played.
#7 Eva Cassidy with the London Symphony Orchestra, images filmed in the U.K.
# 8 And then, much later comes Diamanda Galas and #8!! Circa 2021, for me! In a review of Galas’ work that I had saved, an unknown to me author comments that “Diamanda Galas and Tom Waits must never meet on the same stage. If they did they would surely generate a massive beam of raw energy that would rend the universe into a mass of raw emotion, feral screams and broken radiators.” If you wrote this, please, drop me a note!
Diamanda Gallas and autumn leaves - click at your own risk! I love it!
Back for now to Eva Cassidy, wishing upon a star and over the rainbow!
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Oh my, I gasp, as the fields begin to grow gold. In the days to come we will walk in fields of gold.
So beautiful, your gifted words
Beautiful. Perfect for a September Sunday morning on Harris Creek.