Healey, Jeff

▪ 2009

Norman Jeffrey Healey 

      Canadian musician

born March 25, 1966, Toronto, Ont.

died March 2, 2008, Toronto

was a virtuoso guitarist whom retinoblastoma had left blind before he was a year old. He played the instrument positioned flat on his lap, a highly unconventional method that he adopted for convenience when, at a very young age, he began playing the guitar. Healey sold millions of blues-rock records with his Jeff Healey Band and his subsequent Jazz Wizards band, for which he also played trumpet and clarinet. Healey reached the apex of his career in the late 1980s with the album See the Light. A single from that album, “Angel Eyes,” scaled Billboard's Hot 100 chart to number 5. His second album, Hell to Pay, featured guest artists, including George Harrison. Healey's final album, Mess of Blues, appeared posthumously.

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