Once heard, Eva Cassidy’s once-in-a generation voice is hard to forget; Bruce Lundvall, who back in the 1990s was the boss of Blue Note records – a label with no shortage of ‘name’ jazz singers – freely admitted he was bowled over when he first heard her. “Eva had the most extraordinary and singular voice I had heard in a very, very long time,” he said. “Her singing was distinctive, not only because of its power, but because of its timbre when she sang quietly. It was so very mysterious – it would just freeze me”.

A soprano who moved so easily between jazz, folk, blues and pop you never saw the joins, her set for the patrons of Blues Alley, the hip Washington DC jazz and supper club, reflected her inclusive approach to repertoire. Barely known to the public during her lifetime, this double 12-inch, 45rpm LP package is this album’s first appearance on vinyl; originally a self-released set by the artist herself, it turned out to be her last recording before being claimed by cancer in November 1999 at the age of just 33. On it she covers, Billie Holiday, Sting, Al Green, T-Bone Walker, Irving Berlin, Simon and Garfunkel, Fats Waller, Curtis Mayfield, Louis Armstrong, Buffy Sainte-Marie and just about everybody on ‘Autumn Leaves’.

On paper, it looks an indigestible mix; in practice her voice makes perfect sense of it all – from raising the roof with ‘People Get Ready’ to a delicate ‘Autumn Leaves’ she was sui generis. Bruce Lundvall again: “The first time I ever heard her was in my office. She sang an a cappella ‘Amazing Grace’ and I was just nailed to the wall”.