Jeff Healey was born in Toronto, Canada. As a young child he lost his sight due to retinoblastoma, a rare cancer. As a three year old he started playing the guitar, adopting a unique playing position with the guitar layed across his lap. He started playing in blues bands as a teenager and was well known on the Toronto blues scene.

His breakthough came with the film Roadhouse which featured his band. He signed to Arista and released his ablum See the Light. The song "Hideaway" was nominated for the "Best Instrumental" Grammy Award, and in 1990 the band won the "Entertainer of the Year" Juno Award.

Healey was never particularly enamored with the world of rock music, however, and soon left it for music he preferred, vintage jazz. He had been sitting in with traditional jazz bands around Toronto since the beginning of his music career. In recent years Jeff developed sarcoma, a rare cancer of the soft tissues (probably related to a genetic predisposition to cancer) which eventually spread to his lungs in 2007. On March 2, 2008, at the age of 41, Jeff died of his cancer, leaving a wife, two children and a lifetime of music.