Jefferey Scott Buckley, “Scottie Moorhead” in childhood, born November 17th, 1966, in Anaheim, California, was an American singer-songwriter. He was mainly known for his famous cover of “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. He was an incredibly talented musician in the rock scene and many others.
Since Buckley was young he knew he wanted to pursue a career in music. Even though his father, Tim Buckley, was absent for most of Jeff’s life, he seemed to be following in his musical footsteps. Tim was an American musician in the folk rock genre, and he branched out into others. Jeff only met his father once, but soon after Tim passed away from a drug overdose. After Jeff stayed with his father for a week at 8 years old he decided to change his name from Scottie Moorhead to Jeff Buckley.
Buckley was a session guitarist in Los Angeles for a decade. He gained a following in the early 1990’s by performing at venues in Manhattan, during this time he began writing the beginnings of his album “Grace.” In mid 1993 Jeff created a band to begin working on creating his first album. They spent six weeks in New York recording the basic tracks that would evolve to become “Grace.” After he got an ex-band mate to play guitar for some of the songs on the album, he headed home to perfect the vocals and experiment with other things.
In early 1994 Buckley went on his 1st solo tour in North America to support “Live at Sin-é,” which he followed in March with a ten day tour in Europe. Once he returned from tour he invited Michael Tighe, a guitarist, to join his band. They collaborated which resulted in the song “So Real” which was added to the album later. On August 23rd, 1994, “Grace” was released along with seven original songs. The album has three covers including “Lilac Wine,” “Corpus Christi Carol,” and “Hallelujah” which became one of arguably the greatest songs of all time. Even though sales for “Grace” were slow at first, it went gold in France and Australia over the next two years.
On the evening of May 29th, 1997, Jeff’s band flew to Memphis to accompany him in his studio so they could work on his new material. Later in the evening, Buckley went swimming spontaneously fully clothed in the Wolf River Harbor singing the chorus of “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin. Jeff’s roadie, Keith Foti, was there with him and stayed on shore. When Foti looked up Buckley had vanished, the wake from a tugboat had swept him under water. Rescue efforts that night and the following morning were unsuccessful. On the 4th of June his body was spotted by passengers on the American Queen riverboat. Joan Wasser, Buckley’s fiancée he proposed to not long before, could only identify his body by his purple belly ring and the shiny green nail polish she painted on his toenails previously.
Buckley lives on today through his music and words. He still inspires many to start creating their own music.
