Wow! Once again, I’m so thankful for the time you spend on your blog. Every day I learn the troubling goings on in our country and community, and I get angry. Then, without warning, you help show me that in fact, “it’s a wonderful world.” Thanks for sharing Eva Cassidy, and have a great weekend Jack!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXU219b3Zdw&feature=related

One of the things I always wanted to do was be a radio DJ with license to play any kind of music I liked -- just so that once in a while somebody else would hear for the first time something great that I had discovered. Nowadays, anybody can do that. It is a wonderful world, indeed.

RIP Eva.

She sure hits the switch. You know, the switch between setting up and adjusting and then - Bam - being 100% on.
Sorry about the sad story part. Melanoma, right?
She needed to cross paths with an Australian angel. My brother was bopping around the world doing his international journalist gig and he stopped for a moment to take the family on a vacation in Thailand. While at a resort there, a vacationing Australian doctor approached him and said he had a Melanoma and to act immediately. My brother did. That was many years ago and he's alive and well.
I wish Eva Cassidy had been so lucky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMznNlfLXP4

Jack,
This is a real contribution. I never heard of her and I've just spent an hour listening to her videos. Wow, what a monster talent. Among the smoothest transmissions ever. By that I mean she goes from soft to loud up through her vocal gears with incredible ease. She also has what musicians I knew used to call the ooze factor.
Plus the emotion is just 100% there. No questions about believing her. The other thing is, listen to her talking in that Time After Time video and then the difference when she sings. It's like she has a built-in effects rack in her head.
Finally, the guitar playing is stately and great.
Thanks for passing this on. Dump the tax professor career and become a DJ immediately.

Eva was a force of nature.

Wow .... just, wow! I just watched her ABC Nightline special and am on the way to iTunes ... thank you Jack! I had never heard of her.

Do NOT dump the blogging gig. (I too am grateful for you in it.)
Dump the tax prof gig, though, the first day it's a drag to get there.

DO begin the DJ thing. Older wizeneds can tell you the only regrets you'll find in your inevitable decline is self-sad for what you didn't do ... even if it woulda coulda failed
had you tried or did it.

For that matter, get back to and on the air at K B O O 90.7 FM.
Mainly: listener-funded NO-commercials radio (& TV) is the model for nationalizing the media. The fearmonger flimflam about 'total govt propaganda mind control' when we change to all public-paid broadcasting is a myth dispelled by rotating the DJ's and newsfaces on the air. Corruption grows in careerists, not in fixed-timers tenure limited, (that's why the Pentagon is so rotten now it must be buried); do your 2-year service hitch and get out, go on with your life. I'd like to see disappear anyone who I've seen on TV for more than the last two years -- this means you Jeff Gianola, Mike Donohue, Tracy Barry, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Barbara Walters, Regis Philby, Katie Curic, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, et alii and ALL of 60 Minutes -- SCRAM!,
for peace's sake.

The other defeat of total govt propaganda Orwellcontrol (such as exists now, but) when We the Peeps Occupy and nationalize broadcast media, is this: mix it some-and-some. So 40% of broadcast could stay corporate for-profit commercial-sponsored, and 60% could go public (taxpayer) supported. Always some-and-some. Never all-of-a-kind, neither all capitalist nor all socialist.

The book Web of Debt recounts the history of money. It explains how the global economy inevitably collapses wherever it is conducted 100% all capitalism all the time. It exhibits China as the strongest financial operation and long-surviving because it has 20% private (for-profit) banking and 80% state-owned (socialist) banking. Some-and-some. Mix and balance.

All work and no play monoculture is self-doomed. Jack, go play CDs and LPs on-air.
For your own life's value. And blog forever, too.

I got lucky I got tix to Judy Collins coming Wednesday.
She brings in us clowns. There ought to be clowns.

Left me in tears.

“it’s a wonderful world”

Thanks Bad Brad, Jack.

Thanks for sharing a story and music I've never heard--good stuff all around.

What was so great about Eva is she understood control, understatement and timing. When to hold back, when to let go...but never over-wrought or over-sung like some divas (I'm lookin' at you Mariah, Whitney, et al).
Listen to Eva sing "People Get Ready" on Live at Blues Alley. I guess she knew she was terminally ill then so it really gives the song extra meaning.

Jack, don't even think about quitting this blog. Only to run for office, will we let you off the hook.

There's so much going on behind those eyes. "The sun-burned hands I used to hold..." So strong. So brave.

Jack, I was delighted when I saw you post this while I was online Friday. I held back writing how exciting it was to see you post one of Eva's performances -- and "Autumn Leaves" was so perfect -- because I wanted to watch and see if you received any comments, and it's been wonderful.

One of my personal favorites is Eva's presentation of "Fields of Gold" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfPZ_HpnIVY

Eva's mom has graciously shared Eva and her life with the whole wide world since her passing, and educating people about cancer and self-awareness, too. Since hearing this NPR story (link below), just before Christmas in 2000, I often give Eva CDs as thank you gifts --

Profile: Deceased singer Eva Cassidy still touching people with her music four years after her death - 12/20/2000 - NPR: Morning Edition
http://evacassidy.org/eva/npr.htm

Excerpt:

BLAIR: Eva Cassidy died on November 2nd, 1996. Since then, four records have been released, including one this fall. They haven't received much radio air play here, but in Britain she's one of the BBC's most requested vocalists. BBC Radio 2 produced a one-hour documentary on Cassidy, and her version of "Over the Rainbow" was selected by listeners as one of the top 100 songs of the century. (Soundbite from "Over the Rainbow") Ms. E. CASSIDY: (Singing) Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.

BLAIR: Eva Cassidy's friends say she never really understood how much her music touched people until she got sick. As for becoming a star or making lots of money, Barbara Cassidy says that never was her daughter's goal.

Ms. B. CASSIDY: She really had a very, very hard time just coping with all the everyday things of life, because she was an artist through and through, and she forever had creative ideas, you know. And maybe six months before she passed away and before we knew how really ill she was, I was walking with her, and she said, `You know, Mom, if I were to die, I wouldn't regret it because I've always been allowed to create.'

The March 2001 BBC documentary is on youtube in 3 parts --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sfRvXIictA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STF6AGXGlLQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3fzzLf_r4U

Jack, I was delighted when I saw you post this while I was online Friday. I held back writing how exciting it was to see you post one of Eva's performances -- and "Autumn Leaves" was so perfect -- because I wanted to watch and see if you received any comments, and it's been wonderful.

One of my personal favorites is Eva's presentation of "Fields of Gold" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfPZ_HpnIVY

Eva's mom has graciously shared Eva and her life with the whole wide world since her passing, and educating people about cancer and self-awareness, too. Since hearing this NPR story (link below), just before Christmas in 2000, I often give Eva CDs as thank you gifts --

Profile: Deceased singer Eva Cassidy still touching people with her music four years after her death - 12/20/2000 - NPR: Morning Edition
http://evacassidy.org/eva/npr.htm

Excerpt:

BLAIR: Eva Cassidy died on November 2nd, 1996. Since then, four records have been released, including one this fall. They haven't received much radio air play here, but in Britain she's one of the BBC's most requested vocalists. BBC Radio 2 produced a one-hour documentary on Cassidy, and her version of "Over the Rainbow" was selected by listeners as one of the top 100 songs of the century. (Soundbite from "Over the Rainbow") Ms. E. CASSIDY: (Singing) Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.

BLAIR: Eva Cassidy's friends say she never really understood how much her music touched people until she got sick. As for becoming a star or making lots of money, Barbara Cassidy says that never was her daughter's goal.

Ms. B. CASSIDY: She really had a very, very hard time just coping with all the everyday things of life, because she was an artist through and through, and she forever had creative ideas, you know. And maybe six months before she passed away and before we knew how really ill she was, I was walking with her, and she said, `You know, Mom, if I were to die, I wouldn't regret it because I've always been allowed to create.'

The March 2001 BBC documentary is on youtube in 3 parts, starting here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sfRvXIictA

And hey, folks, don't miss this one:

Eva sings "Cheek To Cheek"...Live at Blues Alley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDZqsBZgso