Jeff Healey

When Jeff Healey died in 2008 the world of Blues lost a young legend but thankfully he had been active for many years and the good folks in German TV captured a good number of his performances on tape and on video. His family has authorised this set of 3cds and 2 DVDs so this is definitely NOT one of the cheapo ripoff items that came out just after his death.

The performances take you through 1989 to 2000 and show a pretty good progression of his incendiary style of playing.

To be frank, it is difficult to judge these CDs on strict musical grounds because Healey was always about aural fireworks and he rips more notes out of his lap held guitar than Joe Satriani on his best days but, unlike the shredders and techno-freaks, Healey always manages to hold to the Blues and not drive down techno blind alleys.

Healey never stuck to his own songs alone – although some of his numbers were sublime – and the tracks here include numbers by Dylan, John Hiatt, The Doors, Spirit (!) and Lennon as well as one of the best ever versions of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. A number of the tracks are repeated as the recordings are from a number of shows but the variation he puts in shows that he was constantly learning and developing as an artist.

To be harsh, he wasn’t the greatest vocalist of all time although he is serviceable, but you won’t be buying this for wonderful vocals – this is one for guitar lovers and it delivers that in huge quantity but more importantly in huge quality.

The DVDs in the package are surprisingly good quality both in the video and the audio quality and it is a joy to see concerts that have been bootlegged in awful quality for years now in pristine shape.

He is missed but this features some of his best material which makes up a bit.
RIP Jeff Healey, one of the greats