“At some country show I was playing, my dad saw one lying on the floor that somebody left or dropped. I had never seen one before”: He started playing at the age of three, and at 13, he came across something that would help define his unique sound

One of the most distinctive (and underrated) blues guitar players of his era, Jeff Healey adopted his radically unconventional approach to the instrument at a very young age, partially due to circumstance.

Before his first birthday, Healey's eyes were both surgically removed due to complications from retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer, leaving him permanently blind.

This, however, didn't stop Healey from picking up the guitar at just three years old (“I was a late bloomer,” he joked with Guitar World in a 1990 interview).

Almost from the get-go, though he'd been initially taught to play the usual way, Healey took to playing the electric guitar on his lap, finding the approach more comfortable (though he would still often play standing).

In his early teens (by which point Healey was already drawing crowds, even performing on TV at the age of nine), Healey would come upon something else that would help define his inimitable sound going forward – the giant triangular thumbpicks he would use for the remainder of his life.

Jeff Healey, Lost Film From 1983 - YouTube

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Asked about how he came to use them in a 1990 interview with Guitar World, Healey said, “I started using them about 11 years ago (when Healey would have been 13) when, at some country show I was playing, my dad saw one lying on the floor that somebody left or dropped. I had never seen one before.

“At the time I was using a thumbpick, since I found using a regular little pick to be uncomfortable. I tried the one my dad found and immediately went out and bought a whole bunch of them.”

“I've used them ever since,” Healey continued. “Large, triangular, heavy picks.”

Explaining further how they fit into Healey's style, Rob Quail, a friend and one-time bandmate of Healey's, said in a blog post on the guitarist's website, “Jeff always used those huge, triangular picks, Fender heavy gauge. I think they worked best for the mechanics of his picking technique, with the picking hand hovering over the strings.

“He always had a couple of those picks in his pocket, I guess because regular shaped picks didn’t suit him, and he never knew when someone might hand him a guitar to play.”

Tragically, Healey died of cancer in 2008 at the age of just 41.

Those looking for a soulful example of his playing would do well to watch him trade stinging solos with another guitar hero who was taken from us far too soon, Stevie Ray Vaughan.