Live at Blues Alley

Live at Blues Alley is an album by American singer Eva Cassidy, originally self-released in May 1996.

Unable to interest a major label in recording her music, Cassidy cashed in a small pension she had accumulated while working at her day job in a plant nursery to self-fund this recording of herself and her live band, comprising Lenny Williams (piano), Keith Grimes (guitar), Chris Biondo (bass) and Raice McLeod (drums), with Cassidy herself supplying vocals and acoustic guitar.

Cassidy was suffering from a light cold through both shows and initially felt that the performances were not good enough to release, but eventually agreed after a previously completed studio take of "Oh, Had I a Golden Thread" was added to round out the package.

Video recordings of a number of the same performances, virtually the sum of her recorded video legacy, were later released on DVD as Eva Cassidy Sings, and again (with slightly different track selection) on the DVD portion of the 2-CD + 1-DVD 2015 compilation Nightbird, of which the audio CDs include remixed versions of the songs from Live at Blues Alley as well as 19 additional tracks from the same concert, a subset of which had previously also been included on other posthumous Cassidy releases.

Live at Blues Alley serves as an example of Cassidy's eclectic tastes, covering classic and contemporary artists from Billie Holiday to Sting, including Al Green, Pete Seeger, Irving Berlin and more.