Did you ever get to meet Jeff Healey? "Hoochie Coochie Man"

[Michael]

Hi Johnny,
I noticed that Jeff Healey was Canada, and so was Colin James and yourself. Did you ever get to meet Jeff Healey? Talk about a talented guy, playing the guitar and he was also blind?!? That’s amazing. I know both Colin James and Jeff Healey were both influenced a lot by Stevie Ray Vaughan, so wondered if they ever met with each other. I think I remember Colin James saying something somewhere about playing with Stevie Ray Vaughan? This song below is some good, good stuff to say the least! 🙂

[William Cingolani]

My kind of blues. Jeff was in the movie Roadhouse. Good stuff Mike.

[Michael]

yes, this is good stuff to say the least and in Killer Blues Johnny shows it. I was surprised to learn locally that some of the guys tried to encourage a few Sax players to focus on this kind of playing and they, quote, “weren’t interested” because they wanted to play Jazz…which is good too because everyone expresses themselves in different ways. But I was like, “are you kidding me?!? This stuff is ‘me'” LOL I’m going to have a custom track created for the Hoochie Coochie Man, also will be doing the ones below. The first one of “Give Me One Reason to Stay Here” will be on the Alto and the Rest on Tenor…good stuff to Improvise with on the Saxophone. The tracks will allot for Saxophone Improvising in select place where we normally would hear the guitar. Get creative and make it our own 🙂

[William Cingolani]

Great stuff Mike. Some low down blues.

[john]

Yes Michael, Jeff and Colin came up at exactly the same time and so we played many festivals, clubs and TV shows together…I hung out and played with Jeff many times.
There’s a pic here of us at a club gig we did together:
http://www.johnnyferreira.com/photo-album.php

[Michael]

Man…..being around all of those awesome musicians….good grief. I would imagine all of those guys had a huge influence on you Johnny in various ways. Are you doing anything with your other website these days? I’ve been doing a lot of reading of articles online/checking out interviews that were held with guys like Jeff Healey, Colin James, ZZ Top, etc.–I recently checked out quite of few interviews with The Rolling Stones Sax player Bobby Keys–and all of them seem to really have their “heads straight on their shoulders” and what I mean is that they’re all incredible players, but they didn’t seem to have big egos, they weren’t “high” on themselves, etc.. Just very normal, super-nice people. I thought the Bobby Keys interviews were pretty cool because he seemed to be a real “character”. He’s from Texas with that very deep accident that you find here in the south…look at the way he played the Saxophone 🙂

[john]

Yes, he was cool. In Colin’s band we did a 2 week tour opening for Keith Richards and Bobby was his sax player. we did get to hang out a bit at sound check everyday and a few times after the shows but can’t say I got to known him very well, he was pretty tight with Keith, they were buddies.
Keith was awesome and very approacheabel, unlike being the opening act for the Rolling Stones…this was much harder to infiltrate….ridiculous security, even backstage. but once one-on-one with the guys they were very personable and nice.

[Author]

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