#28 Stories from the Edge of Music: Jeff Healey’s different musical lives
Blues rock guitarist, traditional classic jazz trumpet player, Roadhouse film actor — how a virtuoso musician overcame his “handicap”
Filmed at the CBC in Toronto, Jeff and his friend Stevie Ray Vaughan tear into “Little Sister”
A VIRTUOSO GUITARIST’S INTERNATIONAL CAREER
You probably know this already, but it’s worth repeating: Jeff Healey was one of the most innovative blues-rock guitarists ever to come out of Canada. Immensely original, he played sitting down, with the guitar flat across his lap.
Incredibly fluid and equally at home playing electric or acoustic guitars, he sold millions of records of his own louder-than-thunder blues rock. He had a major one-off hit, he starred in a movie — Roadhouse — that’s since become a cult favourite. He toured Europe frequently, and took his power-rock trio all over the U.S. and Australia.
He could shred like a metal-head, power-chord his way through electric blues, toy with psychedelic rock, play acoustic guitar with gentle precision, and he had a repertoire of dozens of old pop songs from the ’30s and earlier. An underestimated and expressive vocalist, he could sing powerhouse ballads as well as long-forgotten hits written years before the people in his audience were even born.
Apart from the Jeff Healey Band, he played trumpet in his own old-school traditional jazz band, the Jazz Wizards, and made an album — so far, unreleased — of classic country songs.
And he was blind.
When he was still a baby, Jeff’s adoptive parents discovered that he had a rare eye cancer called retinoblastoma. Before it could spread, surgeons removed his eyes, replacing them with prosthetics.
What he learned later was that people with retinoblastoma had a 50 per cent chance of acquiring other cancers later in life — and that, in fact, was what happened. He died on March 2, 2008, age 42.
As far as Jeff was concerned, he had always been blind. He never demanded special treatment, and was impatient and even dismissive with well-meaning folk who sympathized with what they saw as his handicap. When he was three, he was given a guitar and he mastered it, accidentally developing his unique playing style — he initially thought that all guitarists played the instrument across their laps.
By the time he was nine, he played his first TV show on a children’s programme. Six years later, he formed his first band, Blue Direction, which played bars all over Toronto. Shortly after, he formed a trio with bassist Joe Rockman and drummer Tom Stephen — the Jeff Healey Band.
On the heels of the band’s first major label album, 1988’s See the Light (which sold 300,000 copies in Canada and was a platinum album in the U.S.) Jeff Healey and the band became an international touring outfit. The top 10 hit single from the album, “Angel Eyes” (written by Nashville songsmiths John Hiatt and Fred Koller) certainly helped, and soon the band was touring Europe and Australia.
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A birthday party for old friends and colleagues
A couple of weeks ago, a bunch of old friends got together to celebrate what would have been Jeff’s 57th birthday. It’s an annual event, put together by Jeff’s wife, Cristie Healey, and her husband, Roger Costa.
We’re a motley group — several guys who played with him, his 18-year-old son, a veteran rocker, a film crew making a documentary, and his erstwhile publicist.
And we’re telling stories.
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True story #1
Jeff is 19, and he’s playing at Grossman’s Tavern, a funky Toronto bar which has always welcomed the blues, and always given a stage to newcomers. With a packed house, he is getting standing ovations as he pours new energy into blues-based power rock.
In the audience, one person is unimpressed. The A&R rep from the Canadian branch of a major multi-national record company — the man who’s responsible for discovering and signing new talent. He listens, watches the crowd, and sniffs: “This blues shit is never going to last…” He pauses, and adds:
“Anyway, the kid needs a gimmick.”
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Jeff Healey on the New York television show Night Music. That’s Dr. John on piano, with David Sanborn, Marcus Miller (bass) and Omar Hakim (drums). “See the Light” was the title song of Jeff’s first album.
PLAYING WITH THE SUPERSTARS
On the road, the Jeff Healey Band played sold-out venues and festivals, and Jeff became a favourite with a who’s-who of musical luminaries, playing with countless artists including Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, ZZ Top, and recording with Ian Gillan of Deep Purple. And ex-Beatle George Harrison contributed a beautiful guitar solo to Jeff’s recording of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
But as much as Jeff loved playing powerhouse blues rock (even though he came to dislike having to sing “Angel Eyes” every night), he was equally passionate about early American jazz. He made four albums of high-energy traditional tunes from the repertoires of Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael and others. In addition, he released a 3-CD reissue set of every song Armstrong recorded with the Fletcher Henderson band in the ’20s.
With Armstrong as his model, he played trumpet on these records (as well as on an album he produced for singer Terra Hazleton). And while his horn playing was never as fluid and inventive as his guitar work, his enthusiasm and joy was obvious.
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True story #2
Jeff Healey’s record collection was legendary. The basement of his suburban Toronto home was packed with some 27,000 — yes, 27 thousand — 78 r.p.m. records, stacked on specially built shelves. Lots of jazz, of course, but mostly dance band music from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s.
They were not in cardboard sleeves with neat braille labels, but just packed together touching each other — and inevitably battered, scratched and in poor shape.
Despite this, he could find anything instantly. I once asked him if he had anything by an arcane British hotel dance band led by Harry Roy. “Oh yes,” he replied, leaving his easy chair and walking to the shelves; within seconds, he pulled a record out, ran his hands over the grooves, and said. “Here you go — Harry Roy, ‘Piccadilly Rag’ — it’s on Parlophone R- 3965.”
Astonished, I asked his dad how the heck he did that. Tapping his head, he said: “Oh, you’ve got to remember that Jeff doesn’t have a brain — he’s got a computer in there.”
After Jeff’s death, the collection was donated to the University of Toronto archives.
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True Story #3
On tour in Australia, Jeff found a treasure trove of old jazz and dance band 78s, since there were few avid record collectors there and second-hand shops and Salvation Army stores had not been pillaged as they had been in Canada and the United States.
Of course, he wanted to play them immediately, so he purchased a second-hand wind-up gramophone. And then racked up major long-distance phone bills, calling his friends in Canada to play his new finds for them.
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A PERSONAL NOTE FROM JEFF’S LAST PUBLICIST
If I could be personal here, let me tell you that when I was a teenager in Britain, one of my favourite traditional jazz bands was led by the trombone player Chris Barber. In 2005, on holiday in the U.K., I went to see Barber’s band in a provincial concert hall, more than 50 years after I’d first heard it. After the show, I asked him to autograph the record I had purchased at the merchandise table.
As he signed, he asked where I was from, and he surprised me when he told me he was coming to Toronto to play with Jeff’s Jazz Wizards. When I got home, I called Jeff and offered to do publicity for the dates with Barber at no charge; he was bringing a childhood hero to Toronto and I wanted to be involved.
Instead, Jeff asked me to promote a joint appearance; he had offered Chris his airfare, his hotel for a week, and $500 a date — but had only found two dates.
I quickly put together two shows at Hugh’s Room — then an acoustic music supper club —and made sure that both packed-house performances were recorded. Hearing the results, it was easy to persuade my friend Holger Petersen to put out a live album, Tight Like That, on his Stony Plain label.
And, as a result, I became, until his passing, his publicist, gatekeeper and friend.
When Jeff died, in March 2008, his closest friends knew that it was coming. In advance, I wrote an obituary and waited. His friend Colin Bray called me in the evening: Jeff had died. I wrote the first paragraph, with the details of his passing, and sent it out to some 3,000 media people.
Then I planned to go for a drink in his honour — but the response, from all over the world, was immediate; getting back to so many people meant that I didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m.
All these years on, his friends still miss him. He was a fine musician, a good man, and he left his mark.
Jeff Healey still matters; Canada is proud of his work. And he won’t be forgotten.
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This five minute video — a compilation of live shots of Jeff, in many different settings and with various musicians, synced to a classic Neil Young song, “Like a Hurricane.” Some of this was shot when Jeff was going through chemo; in almost every scene, Jeff is laughing.
A moving tribute to a fallen hero.
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COMING UP NEXT TIME
The music content of the next week’s Substack will be a bit limited — I’m planning a reminiscence of my youthful days as a boy newspaper reporter in England in the ’50s. I figure I’d better get those tales down before I forget them altogether. I briefly considered changing the title to Stories (Away) from the Edge of Music, but decided not to — there will be some music stuff!
Getting stories down before we forget them is a theme these days. Enjoyed this one immensely.
Another great post, Richard. Wonderful videos. Thanks.