Eva Cassidy, "It's Not The Presents Under The Tree"

A few years ago, I bought a budget copy of Time-Life's Christmas music collection at Target; it's a condensed version of the much longer classic compilation available directly from Time-Life.  One of the songs, and the artist, featured was unfamiliar to me.  The song was "It's Not The Presents Under The Tree" and the artist was Eva Cassidy.

The song has an early rock'n'roll, girl group sound to it, and I found the song pleasant enough.  So each Christmas I listened to this song, not giving much thought to who recorded it.  I've discovered, just this year, her bittersweet story.

I'll leave the details to this Wikipedia article about her, but her vocal range and song selection were more diverse than this record indicates.  Unfortunately, she didn't get the chance to show more of the world her talent; she lost her life to melanoma in 1996.

Here is the Christmas song that introduced me to her.



Here is work that better displays her versatility.





Finally, here is her version of a song I love, Fleetwood Mac's "Snowbird." It's featured in the quasi-Christmas film Love Actually.



Thanks!