Country artist Trailblazer by Cree Shane Yelobard has died at the age of 42

Country singer and songwriter Cree Shane Yelobird died unexpectedly on Monday, family members confirmed to CBC News.

The 42-year-old man from Muscovites, about 100 kilometers south of Edmonton, became an award-winning artist after a state of stuttering led him into music.

Close friends say he had a history of health problems, including epilepsy.

“A few years ago, he started saying he didn’t do that many shows because he had seizures,” Yellowbird’s friend and fellow musician Crystal Shawand told CBC News.

“He made a public statement about it. He began to share this and be more open about it with people.

Acknowledgments and honors have been pouring in on social media since rumors of Yellowbird’s death went public on Tuesday morning.

Shawanda said she was shocked to hear the news.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said. “It came out of nowhere.”

In 2007, Yellowbird received the Rising Star Award at the Canadian Country Music Awards, along with three awards presented the same year at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards.

His song, Pickup Truck, became his first top five song in the Canadian Country singles chart in the summer of 2007.

“What he has achieved is enormous,” Shawanda said. “No man from the local country musician has done what he has done yet. It shows the scale of what he has achieved. He was the first to go through that door.”

She believes Yellowbird will continue to inspire other ambitious men from local artists.

“He was an innovator. He opened the door, “Shawanda said.

“He made the dreams we dreamed a little more possible.”

According to a 2009 Yellowbird profile published by First Nations Drum, Yellowbird wants to follow in his parents’ footsteps and become a rodeo cowboy. But his career changed as a result of treating a severe stuttering problem he had as a child.

“He started meeting with a speech therapist, who asked him to sing his sentences to help him speak clearly,” the article said. “The technique proved successful and also inspired a nascent love of music at Yellowbird.”

The Yellowbird family gathers in Muscovy on Tuesday afternoon to organize the funeral. The cause of death was not reported.