Late Jeff Healey star of Maple Blues Awards
The late Jeff Healey was the big winner at the Maple Blues Awards in Toronto on Monday night.
The Canadian blues guitarist and his band won seven out of 17 awards handed out at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on Monday, including best entertainer, electric artist, guitarist and recording of the year for his posthumous album Mess of Blues.
His accompanists — drummer Al Webster, keyboardist Dave Murphy and bassist Alec Fraser — also won their respective instrument categories.
Healey died in March after a battle with the same cancer that robbed him of his sight when he was a baby.
Other winners:
Female vocalist of the year: Saskatchewan born and Toronto-based singer-songwriter Suzie Vinnick.
Songwriter of the year: Toronto's Paul Reddick.
Male vocalist of the year: John Mays, who heads the group Fathead.
Acoustic artist of the year: Harry Manx of Salt Spring Island, B.C.
New artist of the year: Daddy Long Legs of Waterloo, Ont.
International artist of the year: Harlem-born veteran Taj Mahal.
Harmonica player of the year: Ottawa's Steve Marriner.
Last year's top winners, Toronto-based Downchild, received an award for horn player Pat Carey.
Dublin radio airs new U2 single
DUBLIN, Ireland – U2 fans, get your boots on. The first song from the band's first album in five years is ready for you to hear. U2 began broadcasting the up-tempo single "Get On Your Boots" Monday — first on RTE, Ireland's state broadcasters, then for free on the group's Web site.
For decades, U2 has given Irish broadcaster Dave Fanning first dibs to broadcast its singles. Fanning — a friend of Bono since U2's Dublin rise in the late 1970s — led his morning RTE 2FM show with the song, which he praised as "a big song with lots of layers, but not overproduced."
Giving an advance taste on the Internet to the rest of the world is new. The "Get On Your Boots" single goes on sale Feb. 13 in Ireland and shortly thereafter worldwide.
U2's official Web site also lists all 11 title tracks for the new album, "No Line on the Horizon," which will be released Feb. 27 in Ireland, March 2 in many other countries, and March 3 in the United States.
"No Line on the Horizon" was recorded over a two-year period in New York, London, Dublin and Morocco — and is widely forecast to become the biggest-selling album of 2009. It is the band's 12th studio album and the first since 2004's Grammy-winning "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb."
The U2 Web site said Monday that "No Line on the Horizon" will be sold in an unprecedented five formats: a standard CD case with 24-page booklet; a "digipak" edition with a fold-out poster and rights to download a U2 film; a 64-page magazine version; a box edition that includes a DVD and hardback book; and a limited-issue vinyl LP.