Blues guitarist Jeff Healey recovering from lung cancer surgery


Jeff Healey, center

Last Updated: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 | 5:45 PM ET

The Canadian Press


The Toronto-based blues-rock musician Jeff Healey is recovering from surgery to remove cancerous tissue from both lungs.

Healey's publicist said the celebrated blind guitarist underwent a major operation Thursday and is recuperating in a Toronto hospital with family at his side.

Richard Flohil said Healey was diagnosed with lung cancer in December but chose to keep the news private until now.

He said doctors report a successful operation, and noted they caught the disease early due to regular testing.

Flohil said Healey is in good spirits and eager to return to the stage soon.

Healey, an occasional smoker, lost his eye sight to retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer that left him blind in both eyes by age one. In the past 18 months, he's also undergone two operations to remove two sarcomas in his left leg.

"He varies like anybody in this situation between grumpy and depressed about it to being very positive," Flohil said of Healey's mood. "Most of the time he's pretty positive."

"As Jeff says, 'I've had 40 good years, you get a bump every now and then.'"

The operation comes just days after Healey celebrated the opening of a new blues club in the heart of Toronto's Entertainment District. He performed at a gala opening of Jeff Healey's Roadhouse on Jan. 9, an opening that was originally scheduled for Jan. 10 but moved up to allow time to prepare for surgery on Jan. 11.

Flohil said Healey was eager to play guitar again with his blues-rock outfit The Jeff Healey Band and his classic jazz group, Jeff Healey and the Jazz Wizards, with whom he plays trumpet and guitar.

It wasn't clear how the most recent operation would affect Healey's ability to play trumpet.


http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2007 ... rgery.html

I hope he makes a full recovery.

Angel Eyes is "my song" for my wife. 16 years I've been playing that song for her and it never gets old.

His all time best CD (IMO) is Get Me Some. It came out in 2000 on the Universal label Forte distributed in Canada only. If you are a fan, track this one down. He and his band just blister the songs.

There is also a nice Very Best of CD from the UK that came out in 1998 on the Camden label. It has tracks from all four Arista records.

Jeff Healey has passed away.

Canadian blues guitarist Jeff Healey dies at 41



Updated Sun. Mar. 2 2008 8:24 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

Legendary blues and jazz guitarist Jeff Healey has died, his publicist said Sunday. The Canadian musician had battled cancer his entire life.

"It was something he fought with considerable bravery," his publicist, Richard Flohil, told Newsnet late Sunday.

Healey, 41, had lost his eyesight to a rare form of the disease, Retinoblastoma, at the age of one.

The musician had performed with such acclaimed guitar players as B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins and George Harrison.

His full name was Norman Jeffrey Healey and he passed away Sunday in the city of his birth, Toronto, at St. Joseph's Hospital.

Healey first began playing guitar at the age of three and formed his first band while still a teenager, according to his website. He played with a very distinctive style, laying his guitar on his lap.

"Visually, Jeff was an intriguing player to watch, because he played guitar -- by any conventional standard -- all wrong, with it flat across his lap," said Flohil. "But he was a remarkable, a virtuoso player."

One of his best-known songs, "Angel Eyes," came from the Grammy-nominated album See the Light.

His blues band, simply called the Jeff Healey Band, has sold more than 1 million albums in the United States. But along with rock and blues music, Healey was also an accomplished jazz musician.

In his final years he had hosted a jazz program on Jazz-FM in Toronto, playing rare tracks from his vast collection of more than 30,000 78-rpm records.

He had also been touring with a group called the Jazz Wizards, playing American jazz from the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s.

They had been planning to perform a series of shows in Britain, German and Holland in April.

Healey leaves behind his wife, Cristie, 13-year-old daughter Rachel and three-year-old son Derek.

What will now be his final album was announced a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.imwan.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=25958

Really, really sad news. God bless him and his family.

Very sad news. Much too young.

RIP Jeff

I was very lucky to see him twice here in Australia

I'm shocked and deeply sad of the news

He was a beautiful human being.

Jeff Healey, rest in peace.

Although I've always heard great things about his music, I (regretfully) never got around to checking him out.

41 is WAY TOO YOUNG.

First Dan Fogelberg and now Jeff Healey, two who left us too early. Healey is about to release a new cd "A Mess Of Blues." Been a huge fan since the first time I saw him on Letterman promoting his first album and I thought he was showboating because I didn't know he was blind. Tragic, stunning loss.

What a tragic loss. His debut, See The Light, is one of my favorite debut albums of all time. I played the heck out of it.

I had not heard it, but I was facinating by the fact that he was always striving forward, learning to play trumpet and then release at least one jazz album. Why is it that those who have real challeneges tend to excel, while so many others, who are truly blessed with health, seem so dissatisified?

May his family find solace, and Jeff the peace.

Jeff Healey dies at 41 from cancer

Mar 02, 2008 10:45 PM

GREG QUILL
ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST

Legendary Toronto blues guitarist and old-style jazz aficionado Jeff Healey died Sunday in Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Hospital after a lifelong battle with a rare form of cancer — retinoblastoma — that blinded him in his first year. He was 41.

“Discovered” in a Toronto club in 1982 by Texas blues guitarist, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, Healey astonished music fans with his outrageous technique. Self-taught by age 4, he laid the electric guitar across his lap and played it in much the same way as a pianist manipulates a keyboard.

Though he specialized in blues-based rock and sold more than a million copies of his Grammy-nominated 1988 debut album See the Light — released after a cameo performance in the Hollywood movie Road House with Patrick Swayze — Healey’s real passion was vintage American jazz.

Healey hosted a long-running CBC Radio series, My Kinda Jazz, before moving the program to Toronto’s Jazz-FM station, relying solely on his personal collection of 35,000 rare and obscure 78 rpm recordings and an encyclopedic knowledge of the music and personalities he featured in the show.

Healey also played trumpet and clarinet, and in the past decade recorded three albums of vintage jazz with Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards, including It’s Tight Like That.

Healey was an internationally known star who shared stages with B.B. King and Vaughan, and recorded with George Harrison, Mark Knopfler and blues legend Jimmy Rogers.

At the time of his death Healey was planning to release his first rock/blues album in eight years, Mess of Blues, recorded in studios in Toronto, in concert in London, England, and at the popular Entertainment District club that bore his name, Jeff Healey’s Roadhouse. It goes on sale in Europe March 20, and in Canada and the U.S. April 22.

“Jeff was an amazing colleague and as a musician and a personality, in a league of his own,” the Jazz Wizards’ drummer Gary Scriven said Sunday night.

“It was always game on for him. His generosity and sense of humour lasted till the end. He was brave without ever being dramatic. In a word, Jeff was inspirational.”

In 2007 Healey underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue from his legs and both lungs. Radiation and chemotherapy failed to halt the spread of the disease, as did alternative homeopathic treatment in the U.S. this year.

Despite his illness, Healey continued to perform across Canada with both his blues band and jazz ensemble, and had scheduled a tour of Germany and the U.K., including an appearance on BBC’s Jools Holland Show, in April, his publicist said.

“I’m so sad to hear this news,” award-winning Canadian guitarist and music producer Colin Linden said on the phone from New York. “There was a quality of genius in the way Jeff harnessed that distinctive technique. He was such a natural musician.”

Veteran Toronto guitarist Danny Marks, who fronts the Jeff Healey Band at the Roadhouse on Tuesday nights, said “Jeff was a tremendous musician and always so kind. He always knew the odds were against him, but it never ruined his sense of humour. I used to love to watch him having fun — he’d throw his head back and laugh like a little child.”

Healey leaves his wife, Christie, daughter Rachel, 13, and son Derek, 3, as well as his father and stepmother, Bud and Rose Healey, and sisters Laura and Linda.


Legendary Toronto musician Jeff Healey specialized in blues-based rock and sold
more than a million copies of his Grammy-nominated 1988 debut album, See the Light.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/308736

Real sorry to hear this. I bought and enjoyed "See the Light" but kind of lost track of him after that.

Someone else posted this at one of the other forums, where I read it first. Rest In Peace to a very talented, young man.

Very sad. He was young.

He will be missed. I remember watching highlights from a Jazz Festival in Kaslo, B.C., and Jeff''s show had to be interupted because a black bear decided it wanted to be part of the audience. Very talented and succeded due to being talented and not "fashionable".

So this weekend here in Toronto saw a celebration of Jeff's music, and I and Trevah were lucky enough to attend the night of blues last night. It was at the Sound Academy here in Toronto, which held a sold out 2400 people celebrating the Blues and blues based rock that Jeff loved earlier in life. It was hands down one of the best shows I've ever seen. The bands took the stage at 7:30, and ended at 2 am. In between them, we got to witness some of the greatest music ever recorded.

After Jeff's Jazz Wizards played, the current line up of the Jeff Healey's Blues band came out to start their night, and kicked the night off with Angel Eyes, his biggest pop hit. After playing with Danny Marks, and the surviving members of the Downchild Blues Band (the band that inspired the Blues Brothers), they backed up Greg Goddowitz (Goddo) for 3 songs. At this point, everything is rockin and the beer is flowing freely. His current band took a break, and was replaced by his alumni band, including local faves Pat Rush and Gerome Godboo. After a kick ass set, including what may have been the best Healey Song I've ever heard - One Foot in the Grave - the turned the stage over to Alan Frew, ex-lead singer of Glass Tiger. He played Someday (a Glass Tiger semi-hit, but his best choice) and Imagine (a minor John Lennon hit), accoustically and unaccompanied. I was surprised he had that much talent, but doing Imagine didn't seem to fit.

The personal low point for me was the next artist, as Alannah Myles came out with a bit of diva attitude, and a lot of cocaine in her system. She's not looking good, but made it through Lover of Mine and Black Velvet. And the crowd enjoyed it. She left, and Canadian Blues veteran Matt Minglewood came out and got the place rocking again. Matt's been doing this for 30 years, and he looked absolutely in place on this stage. Guitar wizards Jimmy Bowskill and Tony Springer then blistered their fingers on their guitars for us. Wild T doing All Along the Watchtower was a highlight, because he is good enough on guitar to play Hendrix well. And if Bowskill, who's only in his 20s, gets any better, it's gonna be scary.

Blue Rodeo was up next, and played Hasn't Hit Me Yet, and Try. I don't know if I'll be buying a Blue Rodeo album, but I certainly now need to see them live. A very real band in a good sense. I was told they are the fathers of Alt Country. I still think there's nothing Alt about them. After Blue rodeo, Vancouver icon Colin James fronted the Healey Blues band as they played his big hit, Voodoo Thing, and Little Wing. More Hendrix by someone with the skill to pull it off.

After Colin was done, we were done with purely Canadian Icons, and moved up to Global Rock and Roll Legends. The first guy out was Randy Bachman, and he did, in order, Let it Ride, American Woman, You Ain't seen nothing yet, and Takin Care of Business. And he kicked ass doing em. In a lot of ways, the entire legacy of Canadian rock can be tracked back to these 4 songs. After Randy, David Wilcox did a set of 4 songs. I'm not familiar with his stuff, but it was really good. Of course, at this point, I've consumed several beer more than are good for me, so I may have a hard time finding out what he played until someone posts a set list.

The next guest was Jack Bruce. THE Jack Bruce. He opened with Sunshine of Your Love, and completely blew me away.After a couple of other tunes, he closed with White Room. It was incredible. I'm probably never going to get to see Cream - I'm not a big enough fan to pay the thousands of dollars it would take, even if they ever play again - but my god this was close.

The final guest of the evening then came out, and with a really close approximation of the original howl, Ian Gillan tore into Highway Star. That song was absolutely incredible. After a couple of rarer songs that Jeff really liked playing (I don't think I recognized them), he closed with Smoke on the Water. The man can still sing. Incredibly well. And the crowd loved every second of it.

After Ian finished his set, he was joined on stage by Jack Bruce, David Wilcox, Randy Bachman, and Colin James, and supported by the Blues Band, they played the song that broke Jeff. And yes, after that, we could all See The Light, because it was 5 after 2 in the morning, and time to go home. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face, and laughed all the way into my house. I'm thinking that's how Jeff would have wanted it.

Jason