Jeff Healey was a Canadian blues, rock and jazz guitarist, singer and songwriter who attained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. He reached No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart with “Angel Eyes” and reached the Top 10 in Canada with the songs “I Think I Love You Too Much” and “How Long Can a Man Be Strong”. Norman Jeffrey “Jeff” Healey (born March 25, 1966 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) lost his sight as a child due to retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer. He was adopted as an infant; his adoptive father was a firefighter. When he was almost one year old, Healey lost his sight due to retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the eyes. His eyes had to be surgically removed, and he was given ocular prostheses.
Healey began playing guitar when he was three, developing his unique style of playing the instrument flat on his lap. This was also because his parents didn’t know how to play the guitar either. As a teenager he started playing in prominent venues in Toronto and even got to play with legends like Buddy Guy. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to bassist Joe Rockman (born January 1, 1957, Toronto) and drummer Tom Stephen (born February 2, 1955, New Brunswick – died February 20, 2023), with whom he formed a trio, the Jeff Healey Band. After being signed to Arista Records in 1988, the band released the album See the Light, which appeared on the RPM Top 100 chart in 1989. It featured the hit single “Angel Eyes” and the song “Hideaway“, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. While the band was recording See the Light, they were also filming (and recording for the soundtrack of) the Patrick Swayze film Road House.
In 1990, the band won the Juno Award for Canadian Entertainer of the Year. The albums Hell to Pay and Feel This gave Healey 10 charting singles in Canada between 1990 and 1994, including a cover of the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps“, which featured George Harrison and Jeff Lynne on backing vocals and acoustic guitar. Post the long tour after supporting Fell This Jeff took a break from touring due to his health and released Cover To Cover, an album full of his favourite songs and influences. But then he mostly concentrated on his jazz & blues club, Healeys’ in Toronto. He also started playing more jazz tunes live at the club. 2000 saw him and the band release Get Me Some, which didn’t do as well as the previous 3 albums.
Other than a couple of live albums, he only released jazz records until 2008. On January 11, 2007, Healey underwent surgery to remove metastatic cancer tissue from both lungs. In the previous 18 months, he had two sarcomas removed from his legs. On March 2, 2008, Healey died of sarcoma in his home town of Toronto at the age of 41, just a few days short of his 42nd. Over the years, Healey toured and sat in with many well-known performers, including The Allman Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, B. B. King, ZZ Top, Steve Lukather, Eric Clapton and many more. In 2006, Healey appeared on Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan’s CD/DVD Gillan’s Inn. Healey discovered and helped develop the careers of other musical artists, including Alex Pangman, Terra Hazelton, Amanda Marshall, Shannon Curfman, and Philip Sayce.
My introduction to the late, great Jeff Healey was back in late 1990 when a friend of my in grade 9 let me borrow his cassette tape of this album and recommended it to me. A little while later, I bought my own copy. I became a huge fan and bought Feel This in 1992 and his debut See The Light in between. He has always been one of my favourite singer/guitarists since 1990 and the music world lost a great artist when he passed away.