Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997) was an American musician and singer.
Jeff Buckley was born in Anaheim, California, from musical lineage. His mother, Mary Guibert, was a classically trained musician, and his father, Tim Buckley, was a well-known folk singer.Buckley began playing guitar at the age of five after discovering an acoustic guitar in his grandmother’s closet. However, Buckley only met his father one time; the two spent a week together when Buckley was 8. His father died of a heroin overdose at age 28, less than a year after the pair's meeting. Buckley was close with his stepfather, Ron Moorhead, and he gave Buckley his first Led Zeppelin album, which would prove to be highly influential to the future musician.
After performing in a handful of cover bands throughout high school, Buckley attended the Los Angeles Musicians Institute after his high school graduation. Over the next several years, he played various gigs and wrote songs, looking for direction. In 1990, he moved to New York City, where he eventually joined the band Gods and Monsters, featuring Gary Lucas, the former guitarist with Captain Beefheart. It wasn't long, though, before he left the group to embark upon a solo career. In 1991, Buckley made his public singing debut at a tribute concert for his father called “Greetings from Tim Buckley” performing “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain,” a song Tim Buckley wrote about an infant Jeff Buckley and his mother.
He found his home away from home in a tiny East Village café called Sin-é where he first appeared in April 1992 and quickly earned a regular Monday night slot there. His repertoire consisted of a diverse range of folk, rock, R&B, blues and jazz cover songs, much of it music he had newly learned. During this period, he discovered singers such as Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Van Morrison, and Judy Garland. Some of his performances were captured on a four-song EP titled Live at Sin-é, which was released in 1993.
His full-length full-band album, Grace, was released in the United States on August 23, 1994, the same day Buckley and band kicked off a European tour in Dublin, Ireland. In addition to seven original songs, the album included three covers: “Lilac Wine”, based on the version by Nina Simone; “Corpus Christi Carol”, from Benjamin Britten’s A Boy was Born, Op.3, a composition that Buckley was introduced to in high school, based on a 15th-century hymn; and “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, based on John Cale’s recording from the Cohen tribute album, I’m Your Fan. Grace was released to a modest reception, but found some kindred spirits in the critical realm. Buckley and his band went on tour to promote the album for almost three years, during which time the album and Buckley saw popular and critical attention grow.
In the years since its release, in fact, Grace has been lauded again and again, seemingly picking up momentum with each passing year. The album was ranked No. 303 on Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2003 and No. 1 on Mojo magazine's "Modern Classics: 100 Greatest Albums Of Mojo's Lifetime" list in 2006, and Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" was ranked No. 259 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2004, among several other honors. An especially notable accolade was provided by David Bowie, who named Grace the sole album he would want if stranded on a desert island.
After completing touring in 1996, Buckley started to write for a new album to be called My Sweetheart the Drunk. Buckley worked with Patti Smith on her 1996 album Gone Again and met collaborator Tom Verlaine, the lead singer for the punk band Television. Buckley asked Verlaine to be producer on the new album and he agreed. By the summer of 1996, Buckley had begun recording demos for his second album, which he intended to call My Sweetheart the Drunk. The recording sessions were held in New York City and Memphis, Tennessee, where Buckley had recently relocated. On May 29, 1997, the night his band was arriving from New York to record the final studio tracks, Buckley and a friend took a detour while en route to the recording space.
After travelling to the local Wolf River Harbor, where Buckley spontaneously decided to go swimming in the Mississippi River (Buckley had gone swimming there several times before). He waded into the water fully clothed and began swimming. The wake of a passing boat sucked Buckley under, and he drowned. His body was recovered six days later, after it was seen by a riverboat passenger.Buckley’s autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system and the death was ruled as an accidental drowning.
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Since his death, there have been many posthumous releases of his material, including a four-track collection of demos and studio recordings of his unfinished second album My Sweetheart the Drunk, expansions of Grace, and the Live at Sin-é EP. Chart success for Buckley came posthumously; with his cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", Buckley attained his first number one on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs in March 2008 and reached number two in the UK Singles Chart that December. Rolling Stone included Grace in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and included Buckley in their list of the greatest singers.
(Edited from Biography.com., This Day In Music & Wikipedia)