BLAST FROM THE PAST!

jeff buckley singing hallelujah, live circa 1996.
i remember staying with my friend gary in phoenix, AZ and he playing me buckley's version of this leonard cohen classic, and i thought to myself, this person sounds like they are no long of this earth. apparently i was right.

Jeffrey Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician. After a decade as guitarist-for-hire in Los Angeles, Buckley gained popularity in the early 1990s by playing cover songs at venues in Manhattan's East Village, such as Sin-é, gradually focusing more on his own material.

Over the following two years, the band toured widely to promote the album, including concerts in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. In 1996, they stopped touring and made sporadic attempts to record his second album in New York with Tom Verlaine as producer. In 1997, Buckley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to resume work on the album, to be titled My Sweetheart the Drunk, recording many four-track demos while also playing weekly solo shows at a local venue. While awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during a spontaneous evening swim--fully clothed--in the Mississippi River, when he was caught in the wake of a passing boat. His body was found on June 4, 1997.

Since his death, there have been many posthumous releases of his material, including Leonard Cohen's song, "Hallelujah." he attained his first #1 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs in March 2008 and reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart at Christmas 2008. Buckley and his work remain popular and are regularly featured in 'greatest' lists in the music press.