Guitar Great, Jeff Healey Lost battle to Cancer at 41

Grammy-nominated guitar great Jeff Healey, who rocked Patrick Swayze's Road House, died Sunday at a hospital in Toronto of the cancer that left him sightless as a child. He was 41.

Top 40 fans may remember Healey for the 1988 soulful hit, "Angel Eyes." Bad-movie fans surely and fondly remember Healey as Road House's Cody, the blind musician who memorably observed of Swayze's philosophizing, Tai Chi-posing bouncer, James Dalton, "I thought you'd be bigger."

Bryan Adams, a Canadian like Healey, remembered his countryman more simply, calling him one of his nation's "greatest talents."

"It is a huge regret to have to say goodbye," Adams said Monday, per the Canadian Press. "Wherever you are Jeff, we remember rocking with you."

Born March 25, 1966, in Toronto, Healey was stricken with retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye, at age one.

"My eyes were unable to be saved and had to be removed, so I was fitted with artificial eyes," Healey wrote on the website for his self-titled band.

The blind Healey picked up a guitar at age three and essentially never put it down. From the outset, Healey developed the style that would become his trademark: Playing while seated, with the guitar flat on his lap.

"I tried playing the normal way," Healey wrote on the band website, "but I just wasn't very comfortable."

By the time he was barely out of his teens, the prodigy with a penchant for the blues had jammed with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King and Albert Collins.

The Jeff Healey Band released its first album, See the Light, in 1988. The collection spawned "Angel Eyes," and helped Healey collect his first Grammy nomination, for Best Instrumental Rock Group.

Road House opened in 1989. In addition to appearing in the movie, Healey and his band contributed to the soundtrack, including the cut, "Roadhouse Blues."

Healey never acted in another movie. But his music career went on and on.

In the 1990s, his Hollywood and music careers came together again in a way, when he opened Jeff Healey's Roadhouse, a still-thriving Toronto-based blues, jazz and rock club.

In late 2006, the cancer that plagued Healey as an infant returned, this time affecting his legs and lungs.

"Please be assured, all, that I am happy and positive about all this," Healey wrote on his official website last September.

In January, Healey, by then about to head off to Nevada and to a round of alternative therapy, optimistically wrote of touring dates and a new album.

"My energy is up, my spirit is strong and I'm read[y] for anything," he wrote.

While a new tour was not meant to be for Healey, the new album was. Mess of Blues is due out Apr. 22, his website said.

"All I can modestly say about the CD is..." Healey wrote in January. "ENJOY!!!"