Jeff Healey, a Canadian guitarist, singer and songwriter whose band sold millions of blues-rock records and who also pursued a passion for old-time jazz, playing the trumpet and clarinet, died on Sunday in Toronto. He was 41.
He died of lung cancer, his publicists said.
Mr. Healey, who was blind, played his guitar with the instrument flat on his lap, resulting in what Guitar Player magazine called “astoundingly fluid bends and vibrato.” He blended jazz, rock and the blues.
Mr. Healey’s greatest success came in the late 1980s, when his band recorded the album “
See the Light.” It reached platinum status in the United States by selling more than one million copies and eventually two million worldwide. A single from that album, “
Angel Eyes,” was the Jeff Healey Band’s only Top 40 hit, reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1989.
The same year the band performed the soundtrack for “Road House,” a movie starring actor Patrick Swayze. The band also had speaking parts. Soon the group was big enough to be booked in stadiums.
Mr. Healey also played the trumpet and clarinet in his own traditional jazz band, the Jazz Wizards. He collected as many as 30,000 old-time jazz records, mainly those on 78 r.p.m., which he played as the host of an hour-long radio show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Read more at Nytimes.com.
/ my profile 
