American Tune

1	Drowning in the Sea of Love 4:19
2	True Colors 4:50
3	The Water Is Wide 4:20
4	Hallelujah I Love Him So 2:33
5	God Bless the Child 5:17
6	Dark Eyed Molly 3:28
7	American Tune 4:06
8	It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) 2:23
9	Yesterday 3:09
10	You Take My Breath Away 5:39

Barnes & Noble

It was years after vocalist Eva Cassidy lost her battle with cancer that she found fame, and it's been a few years more that the music world can identify just why. Cassidy, who died in 1996, was in many was a precursor to Norah Jones -- another vocalist who has the ability to take most any kind of music and make it her own. On American Tune, Cassidy doesn’t need to over-emote on “True Colors,” as Cyndi Lauper did with her version. Instead, she makes the love song build from a folk beginning to an enthralling plea for recognition and then returns to a quiet ending. With their powerful simplicity, Cassidy’s versions of “The Water Is Wide” and “Dark Eyed Molly” could have been sung by a young Joni Mitchell, while her take on the Billie Holiday signature tune “God Bless the Child” comes not so much from the blues of the original but more from the hippie pop of the '60s. Neither her cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” nor the Beatles' “Yesterday” sits far from the original versions. Perhaps most surprising for those new to Cassidy is her gentle but jazzy takes on the standards “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing” and “Hallelujah I Love Him So.” But the real shocker is a bluesy rock version of soul singer Joe Simon’s 1971 hit “Drowning in the Sea of Love.” Here Cassidy lets loose without going over the top, enticing the listener with a deep pain that needs no hysterical enhancements. Her most special music, no matter its source, came straight from the heart. Roberta Penn

All Music Guide

The saga of Eva Cassidy, the late Washington, D.C., singer who gained fame long after her early passing from melanoma, continues vibrantly on American Tune, a collection of ten more "leftovers" that former bandmates discovered in the past year -- similarly as they did on Imagine, the previous release of great cuts. While she never achieved much more than local recognition in her lifetime, her inspirational legacy is not only rooted in her own story of personal courage but her ability to take songs that have been heard thousands of times and make them sound fresh, exciting, even better than the original. Just as Sting marveled at her heartbreaking rendition of "Fields of Gold," you can imagine Cyndi Lauper finding joy in the singer's take on "True Colors," which begins softly, with an angelic vocal before the full power of Cassidy's blues-rock vocals and her band take over (that slow build is a Cassidy trademark as well). The fun part of any new Cassidy hodgepodge is pegging the many genres she draws from, almost as if she's thumbing her nose at the record execs who wouldn't sign her because she refused to limit herself to any one style. There's the soul-funk drama of "Drowning in the Sea of Love," the gentle acoustic guitar hymn "The Water Is Wide," and a lively rendition of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love (Him) So." The introspective Paul Simon tune the album is named for is given a gently powerful reading but lacks the eye-popping emotional power she gives to "God Bless the Child" and "Yesterday," songs you might think you'd heard quite enough versions of. The set closes with the plaintive love song "You Take My Breath Away," well known to folks nowadays from Tuck & Patti's version. Based on the ongoing discovery of more tunes Cassidy no doubt never thought would see the light of day, you can only hope that there are more trunks full of tapes waiting to be mastered and released. Jonathan Widran