The Jeff Healey Band quickly established themselves as a major act, moving from clubs to stadium gigs within a few months. See The Light, their debut album, appeared in 1988, yielding a US top 5 single, Angel Eyes, and a Grammy nomination as best instrumental for a cover of Freddie King’s Hideaway. The following year the band appeared in the film Roadhouse, starring Patrick Swayze, and in 1990 Healey was awarded the Juno (a Canadian equivalent to a Grammy) for Entertainer of the Year. Subsequent albums – Hell To Pay with guest appearances by George Harrison and Mark Knopfler, Feel This (1992) and Cover To Cover (1995), a Grammy-nominated collection of rock and blues standards – failed to match See The Light’s commercial success, however, and a five year hiatus followed.
During that time Healey opened his own club in Toronto. While he continued to play rock and blues guitar, he also concentrated increasingly on jazz, also taking up trumpet to perform every week with Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards. He had begun collecting early jazz records as a child and eventually amassed a collection of more than 25,000 jazz 78s, which he drew on when presenting regular jazz shows on Canadian radio.
He didn’t totally abandon blues rock, though, bringing out Get Me Some in 2000, and continuing, albeit reluctantly and less often, to tour. And just before he died he had made plans to return to the stage to promote Mess Of Blues, a new blues rock album which is due for posthumous release.
In 2005 Healey had told an interviewer that, because he didn’t have any information about his natural parents, he hadn’t known whether his illness was due to genetic or external causes. “I used to believe that once they had removed my eyes, that was the end of the story,” he said. “I understand now that having this in my blood, this won’t be my last encounter with cancer.” Tests showed that both he and his son, who also carries the hereditary condition, were at risk from secondary tumours and although he underwent rigorous treatment in 2007 Healey died in hospital just three weeks short of his 42nd birthday.

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