This last album will no doubt be my favourite blues album by Healey.
(more)
Jeff Healey's recent passing caused great sadness in the blues world and
around the world. We were, perhaps, too used to having him around to appreciate
his talents.
I saw him first in Toronto in 1985, when he was still unknown outside his
home city. They brought him up on stage to play for a flabbergasted Albert
Collins. It wasn't just his unique style, playing the guitar on his lap with a
combination of pulling and plucking the strings, that surprised so many. It was
also the fact that he was so good at it. My last encounter with Jeff was as the
emcee for his show at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival, leading his greatest
love, his pre-Second World War era jazz band. He made it look so easy, and was
so unassuming, you had to remind yourself of how good he was.
Recent years saw Healey move away from the blues for lengthy stretches of
jazz, but he never stayed away for long. It remained his bread and butter, as
concert requests continued to come in overseas and at home.
Plus, he had his Toronto namesake bar, which thrived when its famous owner
was onstage. Healey put together a crack bar band for those gigs and figured he
should document it on disc, as well. The result, planned long before his lost
battle to cancer, is Mess Of Blues (Stony Plain).
Part live, mostly studio, it's made up of tracks Healey's group would wow the
crowds with, playing for the fun of it and showing off a little, too. Much of
the disc is party-trick material, familiar songs that make a bar crowd happy,
especially with the new and exciting takes the group brings to them. You get a
little Elvis, with Mess O' Blues, an old classic in Sittin' On Top Of The World,
foot-stompin' fun with Jambalaya and Shake, Rattle & Roll, and curveball
Canadian covers with Neil Young's Like a Hurricane and The Band's The
Weight.
The album is what it was meant to be, a great night at the best roadhouse
around. But Healey is gone. And what stands out for me is that I won't see this
group, which was scheduled to play the Harvest this September, do these songs.
Hearing them now, hearing him, I realize what I always took for granted: He is
that good. Here are some of the most soaring live electric guitar solos you will
ever need. They match the best players working today or in the past. His
signature style may have been how he played the guitar, but what he played was
amazing, too.
This last album will no doubt be my favourite blues album by Healey. Not bad,
considering blues wasn't even his favourite music.
Bob Mersereau is a music writer and the arts
reporter for CBC in New Brunswick.
Guitarist
and Bandleader Jeff Healey Dies in Toronto Hospital
Jeff Healey with Domenic Troiano and Long John Baldry
Following a lengthy struggle with cancer, Healey passes away on the eve of
the release of a new blues rock album (His First Blues Album in 8 Years)
Jeff Healey, arguably one of the most distinctive guitar players of our time,
died today (Sunday March 2, 2008) in St. Joseph’s Hospital, Toronto. He was 41,
and leaves his wife, Cristie, daughter Rachel (13) and son Derek (three), as
well as his father and step-mother, Bud and Rose Healey, and sisters Laura and
Linda.
Funeral and memorial arrangements are pending.
Robbed of his sight as a baby due to a rare form of cancer, retino blastoma,
and he started to play guitar when he was three, holding the instrument
unconventionally across his lap. He formed his first band at 17, but soon formed
a trio which was named the Jeff Healey Band.
After his appearance in the movie Road House, he was signed to Arista
records, and in 1988 released the Grammy-nominated album See the Light, which
included a major hit single, Angel Eyes. He earned a Juno Award in 1990 as
Entertainer of the Year.
Two more albums emerged on Arista, with lessening success as the ’90s passed.
Various “best-of” and live packages were released, and he recorded two more rock
albums, before turning to his real love, classic American jazz from the ’20s,
’30s and ’40s.
By then, however, Healey was an internationally-known star who had played
with dozens of musicians, including B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and
recorded with George Harrison. Mark Knopfler and the late blues legend, Jimmy
Rogers.
A family man with a three-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter he
preferred to stay close to home. “I’ve traveled widely before - been there and
done that,” he told friends, determined to avoid the lengthy, exhausting tours
that marked his life in his twenties and early thirties.
A long-running CBC Radio series saw him in the role of disc jockey - My Kinda
Jazz was a staple for a while, but in recent years he had hosted a programme
with a similar name on Jazz-FM in Toronto. A highlight of his broadcasts was
always the use of rare — and rarely heard — music from his 30,000-plus
collection of 78-rpm records.
As his rock career wound down as the millennium came, he recorded a series of
three album of early jazz, playing trumpet as well as acoustic guitar in a band
he called Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards. The most recent was It’s Tight Like That,
recorded live at Hugh’s Room in Toronto in 2005, with British jazz legend Chris
Barber as guest star.
At the time of his death he was about to see the release of his first
rock/blues album in eight years, Mess of Blues, which is being released in
Europe on March 20, 2008 and in Canada and the U.S. on April 22. The album was
the result of a joint agreement between the German label, Ruf Records, and Stony
Plain, the independent Edmonton-based label that has released his three jazz
CDs.
Mess of Blues was recorded in studios in Toronto, with two cuts recorded at
the Jeff Healey’s Roadhouse in Toronto and two at a concert in London England.
The backup group on the upcoming CD - the Healey’s House Band - played with him
regularly at the downtown Roadhouse, and at a previous club bearing his name in
the Queen-Bathurst area.
Early last year, Healey underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue from his
legs, and later from both lungs; aggressive radiation treatments and
chemotherapy, however, failed to halt the spread of the disease.
Despite his battle with cancer, he undertook frequent tours across Canada
with both his blues-based band and his jazz group; he was set for a major tour
in Germany and the U.K. and was to be a guest on the BBC’s famed Jools Holland
Show in April.
Remembered by his musicians - and his audiences - for his wry sense of humour
as well as his musical playfulness, Healey was a unique musician who bridged
different genres with ease and assurance.
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