Category: Jam Session
I was shocked to read this this evening. He was only fourty one years old. The music industry has lost a very talented individual...
release:
Despite long battle with cancer, Jeff Healey's death still shocking, bandmate
6 hours ago
TORONTO — Acclaimed jazz and rock guitarist Jeff Healey was remembered Sunday as a musician of rare ability who had a wicked sense of humour and a generous
nature as fans and bandmates mourned his death at age 41, following a battle with cancer.
Bandmates of Canadian rock and jazz legend Jeff Healey were among those shocked by the news of his death Sunday.
Healey died Sunday evening in a Toronto hospital surrounded by family and a bandmate, Colin Bray.
Bray, the bass player with Jeff Healey's jazz Wizards and the frontman's long-time friend, said he and many others expected the guitarist to rally from
this latest illness.
"I don't think any of us thought this was going to happen," Bray said in a telephone interview. "We just thought he was going to bounce back as he always
does."
Healey had battled with cancer since the age of one when a rare form of retinal cancer known as Retinoblastoma claimed his eyesight.
Bray said Healey had been hospitalized for a week and that his advanced lung cancer made his final hours difficult.
Healey had undergone numerous operations in recent years to remove tumours from his lungs and leg.
Bray and fellow bandmate Gary Scriven remembered their frontman as not only a world-class musician but an incredibly strong person with the capacity to
motivate those he worked with.
Scriven called Healey inspirational and praised the boundless enthusiasm that allowed him to continue performing live only four weeks before his death.
"He drew his strength from somewhere, I don't know where, but it spread among the band and flowed into the audience," Scriven said.
Healey rose to stardom as the leader of the Jeff Healey Band, a rock-oriented trio that garnered a Juno award, international acclaim and platinum record
sales with the 1988 album "See the Light."
But Bray and Scriven said Healey's true love was jazz, the genre that dominated his last three albums with the Jazz Wizards.
Healey's guitar prowess was characterized by a unique playing-style that saw him lay the instrument across his lap.
It led him to share stages with such rock luminaries as George Harrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan and B.B. King, but Bray said jazz allowed him to exercise his
other instrumental talents such as trumpet and drums.
Healey's love of jazz also led him to host radio shows on the CBC and a local Toronto station where he spun long-forgotten numbers from his personal collection
of over 30,000 vinyl records.
But Bray said his "best friend" saw himself first and foremost as an entertainer and said Healey seemed to derive therapeutic benefits from playing live
shows.
Recalling Healey's weakened condition at his final performance on Feb. 2 in Sarnia, Ont., Bray said Healey seemed to draw strength as the set progressed.
"At the end of it, I can't believe how much better he looked. It was like blood to him."
Healey's death came weeks before the release of his first rock album in eight years.
"Mess of Blues" is slated for a North American release on April 22.
Healey is backed on the album by the resident band at Jeff Healey's Roadhouse, the blues club he founded and named after a 1989 Patrick Swayze movie in
which he appeared.
The album features two live tracks recorded in the last few months of his life.
The Grammy-nominated musician is survived by his wife Christie and two children; daughter Rachel, 13 and son Derek, 3.
Funeral and memorial arrangements have not yet been announced.
I had a few friends that went to school with Healey. He attended the Ontario School for the Blind in the late sixties up to the early eighties. Did you know that besides the rock band he liked collecting old jazz records. He was in to the old big band stuff from the twenties and thirties. Collin Bray would later take over a dj show Jeff did on C.I.U.T. 89.5 in Toronto. Jeff would get on an hour each week spinning jazz records. Most people were impressed on his knowledge of the records he played and the later host after him filled those shoes comfortably. I didn't know they played in a band together. I never heard those shows on C.I.U.T. but the cbc which streams everywhere on the internet carried Jeff's shows because he'd later get a gig there spinning records. So when he had time he'd look for radio shows to play his records. I know someone that listened to his show regularly both the college radio station broadcasts and the cbc broadcasts as well. Hans last who went to school with Jeff in the seventies remembers Jeff's fascination with radio. At the time the cordless mikes operating on the fm band were popular. People at the school like many other kids found they could broadcast on the fm band with those mikes. Jeff found a way to monkey around with the little antenna on the cordless mike to put out a way better signal. He removed the antenna completely and attached some sort of monster contraption to it. Now his power output was increased from maybe the distant of one room to the next, to the whole damn campest which was several thousand acres. He must have spent a lot of his time practicing for radio while he was playing with this. Eventually when the University of Toronto opened up their radio station Jeff found his place. That radio station's been in existent as of 1987 May on 89.5. It's a dynamite signal with the transmitter located on the CNtower. In 1990 Jeff was devastated when Steven Rayvon died and would mention him when he could. I guess now they're back together jamming away. Who knows? He might be able to meet all the past greats with whom he had such knowledge of when he'd spin their records and explain it to you the listener.
Well, that is too bad. I had gone to a few of his shows back in the 90's. I had kind of lost track of his music, but I had herd recently about his battle with cancer, Jeff and another friend of mine share the same rare eye disease!
R.I.P. Jeff, though you're gone, your legasy will live on, and you'll never be forgotten. It just goes to show this thing called life is sutch a fragile thread by witch we all hang by.
That's a damn shame. I hadn't heard about the cancer. He was really talented.
I really liked what I have herd by Him. God bless and may you rest in peace.
I just never realized he was that young.
He was taken way, way too young musicly as well. If you look at others like B.B. King, buddy guy and others, they're in their 70's and still doing it, so jeff still had allot of good years in him musicly.
actually BB king is now in his eighties. I saw bo diddly a couple years ago and he's in his late seventies/early eighties by now. Really good show. I really wish I could have seen stevie though.