A Songbird Sang in Blues Alley Stable

Eva Cassidy

February 2^nd 1963 – November 2^nd 1996

http://www.last.fm/music/Eva+Cassidy/+images/75896530

I am moved to write about Eva for several reasons, the most important of which is the inspiring nature of her incomparably beautiful inner spirit. She would have been 49 years old this autumn.

Perhaps my muse was also triggered by announcements of next week’s tributes to her at Strathmore or perhaps nagged by my long-held intention to write about Blues Alley stable – with which she is inextricably and eternally connected. Regardless of the reason, the time has come. Her music and life have inspired and lifted me for years, through hard times and easy times and I owe her much.

Eva’s story is haunting, heart breaking and almost mystical.

She did not pander to popularity. She did not play to the right or the left or the mainstream. Eva proved herself to be a true artist, dedicated to perfecting her craft and driven by a passion, which was guided by her soul. She listened to the strings of her heart. In her lifetime she was well-loved and little known. She refused to be bullied into singing what would sell, preferring to sell what she was singing. Her musical talent spread across a broad spectrum of genres amongst which she moved with grace and ease. People tried very hard to pigeonhole her but she was no pigeon. She was a “songbird.” She was true to herself. There was no need to “sell” and she was no shill. She simply was.

She was humble and even shy. During her life she did not seek fame, yet after her death it found her. She will never age.

Friends and family have lovingly nurtured her memories and kept her spirit alive to share with a world, which has come to revere her. http://evacassidy.org/eva/

She was courageous, not only in overcoming insecurities about performing in public but also about holding true to her creative instincts. Her courage continued to the end as she faced her mortality so early in a life that had really just begun to click for her.

Eva left a legacy of life lessons for everyone.

When she died, she had created one self-published live recording album that she sold almost reluctantly from the trunk of her car. She had a couple of hundred fans.

In 2005 when Amazon published their 25 top selling artists from the company’s first ten years, the little known songbird who sang in a Blues Alley Stable had soared to the #5 spot, surpassing Elvis, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

She was courageous, not only in overcoming insecurities about performing in public but also about holding true to her creative instincts. Her courage continued to the end as she faced her mortality so early in a life that had really just begun to click for her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/arts/music/24topc.html?ref=evacassidy

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/eva_cassidy/index.html

Eva’s musical sensibility and raw talent remain breathtaking even through recordings and videos that are unpretentiously produced and archived. When you listen to her, the world stops for a little while.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/music/features/1browncassidy0309.htm

When Chuck Met Eva, Washington Post, Sunday March 8^th 1998

http://www.amazon.com/Live-Blues-Alley-Eva-Cassidy/dp/B000009PO2

Blues Alley, located one block below M Street off Wisconsin Avenue behind #1073 has become a Washington icon and destination site. The architectural features of the stable have been well preserved and include the hayloft beam, paired hay loft doors, carriage and horse entry arch. An addition has been built beside it.  Its future was not always secure; for it was nearly destroyed by developers who had “master plans” that included destroying the stables and old homes in Cady’s Alley and along the canal walk. The community and historic preservationists rallied and successfully blocked this. 

Canal Walk

According to the Blues Alley club website http://bluesalley.com/visit.cfm: -

“Founded in 1965, Blues Alley is the nation's oldest continuing jazz supper club, having showcased internationally renowned concert hall artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Grover Washington Jr., Ramsey Lewis, Charlie Byrd, Maynard Ferguson and Eva Cassidy in a small intimate setting. Located in the heart of historic Georgetown in an 18th century red brick carriage house, Blues Alley offers its patrons a unique ambiance, reminiscent of the jazz clubs of the 1920's and 30's."

In a May 1^st, 2002 writer Sherri Dalphonse wrote a wonderful tribute to Eva Cassidy in the Washingtonian Magazine. It skillfully captured the essence of who she was.

“Songbird”

“Eva Cassidy's Voice Was Pure and Rich With Emotion. When She Died Five Years Ago, That Might Have Been the End of the Story. But Her Music Has Lived On, and Now It's Making Her a Star.” http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/songbird/

Other articles about Eva Cassidy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/12/arts/death-shy-singer-finally-grabs-spotlight-cd-s-carry-eva-cassidy-s-voice-wider.html

http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/08/05/great-albums-you-may-have-missed-eva-cassidy

You can listen and watch Eva still powerfully speaking for herself (and to us)  …

Fields of Gold

Eva Cassidy Live at Blues Alley 

Somewhere over the Rainbow  

Danny Boy 

The Water is Wide

Imagine

 Eva Cassidy SongBird 

Yesterday

From Bauhaus to ? - Lumpenproletariat Redux

There was once a time, not so terribly long ago, when architects had such a poor opinion of their clients, customers and inhabitants that they believed only they — the sui generis architect — knew what the future building dwellers needed and wanted. According to Tom Wolfe in his monograph “From Bauhaus to Our House” a small and eventually very powerful group of skillfully self-promoting architects of The International Style “policed the impulses of clients and tenants alike.” Wolfe suggested that the “the terms ‘glass box’ and ‘repetition’ first uttered as terms of opprobrium became badges of honor.”

As massive boring big box after big box began to populate the country, the buildings were met with ringing applause like that which greeted the debut of the emperor’s new clothes. Who would dare to challenge The International Style that had arrived from Europe and impregnated the country? Acceptance of Grobius, van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Oud steadily grew amongst the intelligentsia of urbane society cocktail circuits. The birth and nurturing of this impregnation occurred within the University of Chicago, Harvard and elsewhere outside the cloistered ivy walls, continuing essentially unchallenged until Robert Venturi dared to do so in 1966 at the age of 41 by writing the now classic book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Wolfe believed that “Venturi seemed to be saying it was time to remove architecture from the elite world of the universities – from the compounds – and make it more familiar, comfortable, cozy and appealing to ordinary people; and to remove it from the level of thing and restore it to the compromising and inconsistent but nevertheless rich terrain of real life.”    

While Mies van der Rohe is credited with coining the phrase “less is more” Venturi countered by saying that:  “less is a bore.”

According to Wolfe, “Not for a moment did Venturi dispute the underlying assumptions of modern architecture: namely, that it was to be for the people; that it should be non-bourgeois and has no applied decoration; that there was historical inevitability to the forms that should be used; and that the architect, from his vantage point inside the compound would decide what was best for the people and what they inevitably should have.” Yet Venturi led the way to a softening of the Teutonic rigidity of the previous generation of architects. Through his writings, Venturi demonstrated “an approach to understanding architectural composition and complexity and the resulting richness and interest.” He explored and celebrated the process of creating buildings that “typically juxtapose architectural systems, elements and aims to acknowledge the conflicts often inherent in a project or site.” This he referred to as “the difficult whole.”  He articulated the grueling task of integrating the old and the new without compromising either. He recognized that good architecture is a conversation and not a series of disconnected soliloquies.

“We are not free from the forms of the past, nor from the availability of these forms as typological models, but that if we assume we are free, we have lost control over a very active sector of our imagination and of our power to communicate with others….” (Learning from Las Vegas)

(Robert Venturi and his wife Denise Scott Brown – 1972)

http://michael-ahearn.com/portfolio.aspx

      Walking amongst a well-conceived and well-bred collection of buildings is like experiencing a three dimensional symphony. Each generation of building respects those that already existed. Walking into an inchoate collection of buildings is jarring and dissonant, unwelcoming and uncomfortable. It’s like a graffiti alley versus the Louvre. One wants to flee. Venturi understood an “inclusive” approach in contrast to the rudely egotistically deposited monolithic, non-contextual collections of glass and steel boxes from the 30’s through the 60’s.

A building that is out of sync and out of context in a protected national landmark historic block appears to be begging for attention of any kind – like a branding iron - seemingly willing to forgo adulation let alone respect. I guess there are still people in the world who still follow the old adage: - “if you can’t be good at least be memorable.”

Venturi wrote in the opening pages of his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture: - “Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern architecture. I like elements which are hybrid rather than “pure,” compromising rather than “clean,” distorted rather than “straightforward,” ambiguous rather than “articulated,” perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as “interesting,” conventional rather than “designed,” accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim the duality.”  Also: “But an architecture of complexity and contradiction has a special obligation toward the whole: its truth must be in its totality or its implications of totality. It must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion. More is not less.” 

Venturi and Scott Brown at Drexel

References

From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe, Washington Square Press, 1981

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Venturi

http://necrolaico.blogspot.com/2011/06/ganadores-del-premio-pritzker-robert.html

Leaving Las Vegas  http://michael-ahearn.com/portfolio.aspx

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown on The Drexel InterView  http://www.drexel.edu/univrel/digest/archive/112806/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeIlEvWAmqc  Robert Venturi Interview through Drexel

American Architecture Now  - 1984

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RJcNHWu7Y&feature=related

Venturi and Brown interview Drexel 04 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjr98dKTzl8&feature=channel&list=UL

Venturi and Brown Drexel 03  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58vpLayyyu0&feature=channel&list=UL

Venturi and Brown Drexel part 2  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAXYqg018D4&feature=relmfu

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, by Robert Venturi, The Museum of Modern Art Papers on Architecture. 1977

Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, the MIT Press, 1977

*** 

So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, "Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!" in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.

"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.

"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.

http://www.online-literature.com/hans_christian_andersen/967/

1837