Jeff Healy soars.
It's difficult for me to write about Jeff Healy. I was a full time guitarist playing a Strat and Marshall in the early 70's, moving to Toronto way before Jeff Healy happened. I'm also left-handed with the bass string on the bottom. Seeing him as a one dimensional part of Hendrix clone, who I saw in Toronto, I wasn't too impressed. It's too bad he got used to playing on his lap, making me think no-one tried to help him when he started out. He didn't play a lot of chords. Reaching over his strings the same way I do helped him with the wide bends and high string riffs most standard guitarists can't do. Hearing him a few times, I thought it was too bad his band wasn't better. His drummer seemed to be dominating, taking advantage of Jeff's inability to walk around by himself. Even the first few tunes he released played off his blindness. Jeff had a lot to give, and his songs pushed him past the limitations of his business life. He started to stand up towards the end, playing with his hand over the fretboard. I wasn't surprised he gravitated to another, more acoustic instrument, a cornet, that offered no impediments for his lack of sight. Starting his own club and having a house gig for his retro jazz band was a nice thing, getting away from the loud rock club gigs. He'd fire up the old band if someone threw the money his way, but health problems and more musical maturity slowed those gigs down.
My home town Welland has a summer food festival, with live acts. Being a former steel town, there's a lot of rock and country. City council likes to throw the cash at former touring acts in Toronto such as Jeff, Gowan and Kim Mitchell, when they can't clean up the city and let local acts play locally. In a city of over 50,000, there are literally no local gigs. One night, bike-hiking back from an all day adventure, I heard the sound of a Strat and wah-wah through a Marshall amp, wavering along the canal, disappearing and returning. It was Jeff alright. When I got closer, across the canal, I sat on a bench and listened. He played "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", one of the few Beatle tunes I still like to jam. Expecting to sound outside the same as inside is not an echo and feedback thing. So it was interesting to hear such a familiar sound pass by on the breeze. I don't know if you remember that George Harrison song with Clapton, when they moan and groan and oo and ah at the end, but Jeff managed to take it from there and unleash awesome bends, actually pulls, with the wah and riffed out for a long time, crash and burn ending.
Jeff may have struggled, and kept struggling, but when he started playing and singing it was easy to let go and soar with him. He is gone, and it's a blessing, I'm sure it is, because when everyone who knows Jeff Healy thinks about him, he is still playing their favorite song.