JEFF HEALY March 25, 1966 – March 2, 2008
Blind since the age of one when he had both eyes removed Jeff despite a terribly tragic life dying early from extremely invasive cancers, brought an extraordinary gift to the playing of the guitar entirely unique. Possessed of a sheer joi-de-vivre to his energy and playing style he was taken tragically young at 41 due to a fearsome invasive range of cancers to his legs and lungs. I came to him late and in fact after he had passed away but he is always worth enjoying and we are the poorer without him
Jeff Healey could have remained simply a man with a private passion and a huge record collection if lt hadn't been for the '85 concert with Albert Collins: “All that happened really was I met Albert a couple of days beforehand. A friend had talked to him about my playing and Albert invited me up with him for about an hour. We had a good time and he invited me back to play again on the Saturday when Stevie Ray Vaughan was also playing.
"Albert had never heard me play before I got on stage, not even in a backroom.“That was a turning point in my development because it broke me on to the Toronto scene, which is a hard one to crack."It’s easy to get swept under the bridge there and I wasn’t even getting off the pier. I was just working the suburbs and this was my one chance to ride it and see - or go back to the suburbs. I didn't even have a band at the time.”Curiously enough, it has been said Healey started out listening to country music in his hometown of Toronto -- hardly the country capital of North America?“Actually I grew up listening to all kinds of music from country to jazz and took formal music lessons for piano and theory. I got it from all sides of the family - parents and aunties -- I was just fascinated by music.Healey started searching out live music from an early age. He got a small guitar at three, a Gibson SG copy at 11 and by his early teens was playing country music in clubs with musicians more than twice his age.What set Healey apart then - and now - was his extraordinary technique. Videos have brought it into living rooms as far away as Auckland these days. But at the time, word-of-mouth told of the blind guy who sat with a guitar on his lap, formed chords by thumping down his left-hand fingers and pulled or bent strings with his right - and then leaped up, tossed the guitar above his head and could keep on playing.It stung Healey when people thought his style a gimmick or exploited it to get attention for the band.“A number of people still think it is gimmick, but I started playing that way out of comfort and that's all I know."