TORONTO, Digital Journal — Jazz aficionado, guitarist extraordinaire and night club owner Jeff Healey has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters (D. Litt) by McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Nominated for his outstanding achievements in music and for work with various charities, McMaster awarded Healey with one of two honorary Doctorates at an award ceremony. Legendary baseball player Ferguson “Fergie” Jenkins, Jr. was awarded the other degree.
Performing live at the ceremony with his jazz trio, Healey was handed his Doctorate, hood and mortarboard cap by Dr. P. George, President of McMaster University. “I’m thrilled to be recognized by McMaster for my contributions to the arts,” says Jeff. “It’s good to be a Doctor!” he quipped.
Jeff Healey believes there’s no such thing as obstacles. Born with a rare form of eye cancer, he was only one when he lost his eyesight. Though he’s blind, he picked up the guitar and started jamming in public by the age of six. That would fire up his passion for music, a passion that would take him for quite a ride.
Thirty years later, Healey has toured the world with his band and played with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Bon Jovi, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King and Bonnie Raitt. Not to mention scoring Grammy nominations and hit singles that soared on Billboard and Canadian music charts, as well as starting his own music label and nightclub.
“If you decide what you want to do and you sort of organize your plan of achieving them, there’s nothing that’s impossible,” says the 36-year-old blues guitarist and former lead vocalist of The Jeff Healey Band, from his Mississauga home.
Born in Toronto, he was adopted by Yvonne and Bud Healey, and raised in Etobicoke, a western suburb of Toronto.
By the age of three, he was already experimenting with instruments. His father, who took slide guitar lessons as a child, even taught him how to tune and alter the guitar chord with a slide. Healey was smitten, and got his first guitar under the Christmas tree that year.
He eventually developed his own music style by listening to others and jamming in clubs. The conventional guitar technique didn’t work for him, so he decided to play the guitar in his own unique way, holding it on his lap while strumming the chords.
Healey recalls that at first, his family didn’t want him to pursue a music career. They preferred that he get a more dependable job. But now, they’re proud that he’s stuck to his love for music and made it as one of Canada’s accomplished musicians.
On the way to platinum success, Healey faced scepticism from some who felt his guitar technique wouldn’t fly. He recounts meeting Canadian jazz great, Oscar Peterson, when he was 14: “I ended up playing a little bit for him (Peterson), and he suggested to my dad that it would be impossible for me to progress any further with me holding the guitar like that.”
Instead of feeling discouraged by a musician he admired, he only worked harder to get to where he wanted to be: playing good music for appreciative audiences. So, he stuck to his technique and moved on with his music career.
While attending classes at Etobicoke Collegiate high school, he was also playing in bars with jazz, blues and country bands. He even snagged a radio slot on the CBC’s Fresh Air show.
“I had a little feature every couple of weeks. It was kind of a novelty. They’d bring the kid who collected all these records and knew about them, and I’d play a couple,” he says, about his CBC stint.
In 1986, Healey hooked up with drummer, Tom Stephen and bass player, Joe Rockman during a jam session at Toronto’s Grossman’s Tavern, and they formed The Jeff Healey Band. From Burlington to Oakville, his band scored gigs all over.
“I was playing in clubs by the time I was 14 and I was tall enough and my voice had dropped enough that nobody really paid much attention to the fact that I was quite a bit underage for playing in these places,” he says.
The Jeff Healey Band landed a record deal with Arista Records in the United States, and in 1988, put out their first album, See the Light. Their debut album garnered dollar signs, accolades and raves from music fans and critics. See the Light’s “Angel Eyes” track soared to the fifth spot on Billboard Hot 100. The album sold over 300,000 copies in Canada, and went platinum in the States, selling one million. It went on to sell two million records worldwide. Healey was also nominated for a Grammy award alongside Carlos Santana for best instrumental performance on the track, “Hideaway.” The band was even cast in the Patrick Swayze film, Road House, and flew to Los Angeles to cut the movie’s soundtrack, which was released in 1989. In 1990, the band won a Juno award for “Entertainer of the Year.”
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| Dr. Jeff Healey (left) accepted his Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Dr. Peter George, President of McMaster University. — Photo courtesy of Kristi Healey. |
With the five albums they’ve released to date, Healey and his band mates wrote some of their own songs, as well as worked with other writers. Healey says he’s a little uncomfortable about song writing because of the pressure from record companies to write music that will sell.
Despite the less stellar sales of the band’s 1992 album, Feel This, which only sold 100,000 records, Healey and his band focused their talents on their Forte Records label and management company, which helped discover Canadian musical prodigies like singer, Amanda Marshall.
After living the extraordinary life of rock stars, The Jeff Healey Band members are no longer together. However, Healey is still keeping busy with music.
“I don’t have any real explanation for it. I’ve been consumed by music,” he says. “It’s just what I do. It’s like breathing.”
He runs Healey’s, his downtown Toronto nightclub, which plays an eclectic selection of music, from jazz and blues to rock and roll and R&B. As an avid music fan himself, Healey continues to collect records (he owns about 25,000), and is a part owner of Sensation Records, an independent music label that reissues recordings from the late ’20s to early ’40s and released some contemporary music from vocalist, Alex Pangman.
Healey also spends much of his time with his family, especially his seven-year-old daughter, Rachel, and devotes time to charity work as a representative for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
Healey says he’s enjoying life, especially now that he has more freedom to pursue his personal projects.
“I’m finally getting around to doing a lot of things I’m comfortable doing and wanting to do,” he says.
The ride isn’t over yet for this tenacious and gifted blues great, who won’t let obstacles get in the way of his musical and life aspirations.
Jeff Healey’s new album, Adventures in Jazz Land is available in stores now.
