Jeff Healey & the Jazz Wizards

Jeff Healey is best known as the blind guitarist with a penchant for blues based music. However, in the years following his prominence in the early ’90s, Healey mastered the trumpet and revealed his true love: jazz. Over the past several years, he has shared his collection of 30,000-plus vintage jazz records as the host of the radio show My Kind of Jazz. As the proprietor of a Toronto club that bears his name, Healey continues to play in both blues and jazz outfits. The Jazz Wizards are the ensemble with whom Healey has recorded his material of late. His last two albums, Among Friends and Adventures in Jazzland, played on the popular sounds of the ’20s and ’30s, and though modest in their distribution, each was well received. Originally released on Healey’s own label, HealyOphonic, Stony Plain Records is re-releasing these albums along with his latest, It’s Tight Like That. The album was recorded live over two nights at Hugh’s Room in Toronto and captures the live performances in all their spontaneity and excitement. The interaction between the players through their lively rendering of early jazz classics is clearly all about having fun. Joining Healey and the Wizards is British jazz legend Chris Barber, who contributes on trombone and provides vocals on a few tracks. Though Healey and his band don’t lack it, Barber’s presence gives the album credence. If you haven’t already experienced the jazz side of Jeff Healey, you have some catching up to do.