See The Light

Musician Jeff Healey died in a Toronto hospital on the evening of March 2. He was 41 years old.

Healey was probably best known as "that blind, blonde guitar player" who laid a guitar across his lap and let loose with some powerful blues and rock. Healey's technique was unconventional—just thinking about how he played makes my left thumb hurt—but there's no denying the technique, phrasing, and soul in his playing was up there with the best. He shared bills with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughn, George Harrison, Jimmy Rogers, Mark Knopfler, and B.B. King.

How low can you go?
Jeff Healey

Healey's main radio hit was a version of John Hiatt's "Angel Eyes" in 1988 (the album sold over a million copies), although he also got a Grammy nomination for best instrumental for the track "HIdeaway" in 1990. Healey's not-so-secret musical secret was that, despite being well-known as a blues/rock prodigy, he was pretty much a jazz guy. He'd been playing with jazz groups since he was a kid in Toronto, and the several year's he'd been focusing on jazz exclusively and playing trumpet and clarinet, of all things. He also hosted a CBC radio program My Kind of Jazz where he played records from his own massive collection of vintage jazz recordings and connected the dots in the development of jazz idioms and particular jazz artists.

Although I'd been vaguely aware of Healey since the late 80's—I think he appeared on Saturday Night Live at some point—I mainly became acquainted with him through installments of My Kind of Jazz in the 1990s, which I could pick up on CBC Radio every once in a while. He was known for his gravelly blues singing voice, but that same voice was perfect as a radio host: strong, confident, with a sense of phrasing and pace that made his points perfectly. And he had a mischievous sense of humor.

Healey lost his sight to retinoblastoma—a rare form of eye cancer that attacks the retina—when he was one year old. In 2006 (I think) he had cancerous tissue removed from both his legs, and began chemotherapy and radiation treatment to try to stop the spread of the disease. In 2007, he had surgery to remove cancer from both his lungs. Despite his illness, Healey was on track to release a new blues album this year—Mess of Blues—and was scheduled to tour Europe this year.

Healey's family requires that any donations in his memory go to Daisy's Eye Cancer Research Fund, a cause he supported. He's survived by his wife and two children, as well as his father and stepmother.