I found out yesterday that a friend of mine, Jeff Lee, who was a regular in the New York karaoke circuit, passed away due to complications during heart surgery.

Jeff was a good man, 45 year old, who I had met at my then karaoke regular spot on 55th street.  We were part of a group of regulars that would show up a couple times a week to sing.  Those were fun times.

As years progressed, I would see him at other venues, since some of us were no longer working by the 55th street bar, but we all kept in touch.  In a way, we did become a family.

It was Chris, Jenny, Cisco, Kevin, Larry, Jeff, Simon, Melvin, and myself, and also the staff.  There would be the folks that came and went, but the core group was always consistent.  Jeff was part of the events in and outside of these karaoke get-togethers.

In recent years, I would bump into him at my current regular place in midtown.  I could tell he was a little sad, but he wouldn’t mention anything, and I was never sure, since he was always a few beers in at the time.  Jeff would always sing standards and was consistently off beat by 1 or 2 beats.  When you realized it, you come to find that to be impressive.  It was a skill of his, although not particularly a great one, it was his signature that was unique to Jeff.

Last night, as a group of us met at the old 55th street location to celebrate Jeff and sing a few, there were a lot of tears and heavy hearts.  Jeff was a good man, and good hearted.

Jeff – We will all miss you terribly, but know that you’re with God and we’ll all see you when the rest of us head home.

God bless, Jeff.  Rest in peace, my friend.