Somewhere Over The Rainbow Song

Somewhere over the rainbow

"It really got me in the heart," Bowditch says. "I was really affected by the quality of her voice and then afterwards, when I heard that she'd died, it made it even worse. She has stayed in my mind and her story has always made me curious."

Fast-forward 10 years, and the Melbourne-based musician was hand-picked to bring Cassidy's songs and story to the Australian stage. Bowditch subsequently asked to co-write the show Eva - Tales from the Life of Eva Cassidy

Cassidy's former boyfriend and producer, Chris Biondo, is comforted that her music is still reaching fans 15 years after her sudden death from cancer, aged 33. In fact, Cassidy's fame - and her more than six million record sales - came in large part after the world heard the tragic story of the beautiful, gifted and undiscovered songbird whose life was cut short by melanoma. She died in her native Washington, DC in November 1996.

At one time Cassidy had wondered how on Earth she would sell the 1000 CDs lying in piles around her. In death, her humble recordings were transformed into 10 albums that resulted in multiple No.1 hits throughout the world.

"Eva's music is good for music. She's a good role model," Biondo says. "Her music is not about self-absorbed, egotistical approaches to life. It's about simply loving to sing and I think people get that and connect with that."

Cassidy's non-conformist approach to her art was one of the qualities that most appealed to Bowditch. As singers they are very different, but Bowditch says they share an independent streak.

"It was fascinating to delve into her life," she says. "We're very different people, but we have something similar at our core, which is quite a bit of determination to do things our own way.

"Neither of us suffers fools easily. In a way, Eva's career didn't get recognised during her lifetime because she wasn't willing to stick to one genre and I think that's a really fascinating part of her story."

Before falling ill, Cassidy was invited to several meetings with major record labels in New York, but they led nowhere. Instead, she and Biondo continued on their merry way - recording Cassidy's interpretations of jazz, blues and folk music, organising gigs in Washington and putting out a self-produced CD.

The pair met when Cassidy walked into Biondo's Washington studio to perform vocals on another artist's recordings in 1986.