Songoftheday 9/24/16 - What you're doing with a clown like me, is surely one of life's little mysteries...

"Angel Eyes" - The Jeff Healey Band
from the album See The Light (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's song of the day comes from the Jeff Healey Band, whose namesake leader was born in Toronto, Canada, and adopted by a family before he lost his vision to a rare form of cancer, where he had to lose his eyes completely (he has prostheses in place since). He started in music very very young, playing the guitar as a child, and playing with others before forming his own group with drummer Tom Stephen and bassist Joe Rockman. They released their debut album, See The Light, in 1988, and the first single, the blues-rock nugget "Confidence Man", reached #11 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart (it also slipped in at #76 in England, to this day his best showing). With the video highlighting his guitar-down style of playing, it got him noticed on MTV.  For the follow-up, the rowdy title track made it to #33 on the rock list. But for the third radio offering, the band released the ballad "Angel Eyes". Written by folk-rock veteran John Hiatt along with Fred Koller, the tender love song plucked many a girl's heartstring...

"Angel Eyes" became Jeff's first and only top-40 U.S. pop hit, reaching the top-5 in September of 1989. The song also climbed to #7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while peaking at #24 on their Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the song was his first hit in his home of Canada, landing at #16, and was a minor hit in the UK at #86.

Later that year, Jeff and the band appeared in the Patrick Swayze-starring movie Road House as the local bar band, and from it their cover of the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" made it to #29 on the Rock chart. They released their second album Hell To Pay in 1990, and while pop radio left him behind, the album still reached the top-40, and four songs climbed into the rock top-40 with "I Think I Love You Too Much" peaking at #5 (as well as the same rank on the Canadian pop list). A remake of the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with George Harrison singing backup landed at #7 on the US Rock chart, as "How Long Can A Man Be Strong" (another ballad like "Angel Eyes") ascended to #8 on the Canadian pop chart. 1992 saw the trio's next set, Feel This, and although the lead track "Cruel Little Number" was their highest-charting rock hit at #2, the album sold considerably less, stalling in the lower quarter of the sales chart. A subsequent set, Cover to Cover (of all cover songs, natch), landed the group their last top-40 rock hit with a version of Stealers Wheel's "Stuck In The Middle With You". After the turn of the millennium, Jeff concentrated more on jazz music, as a musician but more prominently as an archivist/collector and DJ. Sadly, Jeff passed away from lung cancer in 2008.

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Here's the band performing the then-brand-new single in Germany in 1989...

In 2004, Australian soul singer Paulini had a very successful cover of the song, spending three weeks atop the singles chart in her home country, and making the top-40 in neighboring New Zealand...

...and lastly, here's Jeff in 2006...

Up tomorrow: A British R&B collective gets going to the American charts.