Jeff Healey

Jeff Healey passed away after a long battle with cancer. I became aware of Jeff around the time I started playing guitar. His record See The Light was (and still is) a favorite of mine. Often times in the music business, people tend to reduce thing to the lowest common denominator to make it easily digestible for the public, (I could go off for hours on how the record industry thinks that music fans are too ignorant to understand music) in Jeff's case, his technique of playing the guitar in his lap and being blind were both factors that brought him attention from the public, but in some ways it distracted from the fact that he was a truly brilliant musician with a deep understanding and appreciation for the roots of blues and jazz. Jeff made some great records, toured the world, played with the legends of Blues, starred in movies and even had a couple of popular radio shows. He had a collection of over 30,000 jazz 78's (those are records, kiddies). Beyond all that though, and probably most importantly he was a husband and a father with a wife and two children. I was lucky to get a chance to meet and jam with Jeff and honored to play at his club in Toronto on a few occasions. Our prayers go to his family and friends.