Garland Jeffreys
Garland Jeffreys is an American musician, singer and songwriter. He emerged as part of a distinct, mid-1970s New York rock sound that included artists like Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny and Willie Nile. Hallmarks of Jeffreys's music are autobiographical songwriting and an eclectic, hard-to-categorize style that embraces rock-and-roll, reggae, soul, doo-wop, blues, jazz and folk. His songs revolve around signature themes: race and inclusivity, New York City and urban life, romance and family. Critics contend that Jeffreys's category-defying music and multiracial identity often perplexed American record labels, radio stations and audiences, hampering the marketing and reach of his work. Rock writer Kurt Loder described Jeffreys as "a unique voice in American music—a racial and cultural outsider with a first-hand, hard-knocks knowledge of all the various Big City scenes and scams, and a striking ability to render even the grittiest incidents concisely into songs."
Jeffreys sustained a following in New York from the 1970s forward, however his broader fan base grew more strongly in Europe than in the United States. In the US, he is best known for the albums Ghost Writer, Escape Artist and The King of In Between, and the widely covered underground single, "Wild in the Streets"; in Europe, he is also known for the album American Boy & Girl and hit single "Matador." In 2023, a documentary on Jeffreys's life and career came out, Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between.
Early life and career
Jeffreys was born William Garland Jeffreys in 1943 and grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, a child of black, white and Puerto Rican heritage. A difficult childhood included his father leaving when Jeffreys was two, an abusive stepfather, and a neighborhood that was intolerant of racial diversity. He was involved in music from an early age, taking piano lessons at seven, singing doo-wop on street corners, and sneaking into Greenwich Village jazz clubs in his early teens. In the early 1960s, his stepfather worked two jobs to send him to Syracuse University, where he majored in art history. While there he befriended fellow students and music fans Lou Reed and Felix Cavaliere and received a scholarship to study art in Florence—a formative experience.After completing his studies in 1966, Jeffreys began playing at Manhattan nightclubs like Gerde's Folk City and The Bitter End, sometimes partnering with Reed and John Cale. His performances then—and later at Reno Sweeney—often combined cabaret with racial themes, employing props, makeup, blackface masks and a rag doll persona he called "Ramon."
In 1969, Jeffreys played guitar and contributed the song "Fairweather Friend" to John Cale's 1969 debut solo album, Vintage Violence. He also founded the band Grinder's Switch with pianist Stan Szelest, guitarist Ernie Corallo and percussionist Sandy Konikoff. Before dissolving in 1970, they released a self-titled album overseen by Astral Weeks-producer Lewis Merenstein, which Robert Christgau and others noted for Jeffreys's songwriting and a sound reminiscent of The Band.
Solo musical career
Jeffreys's solo music fuses diverse styles, personal songwriting and lyrics that can be confrontational, observational or elliptical, within albums often focused around a topic. Recurrent subjects include race, identity, his struggle to find a place in the white world of 1970s–1980s rock, troubled youth, and in later work, hard-won wisdom and mortality. His work also serves as a long-running chronicle of the appeal, struggle and danger of urban life across New York City's five boroughs. Rock critic Jay Cocks wrote: "A Jeffreys record is like a fast cruise across the radio band. Reggae, jazz and full-tilt rock all blend with casual finesse. This is big-city soul music born of tough beginnings and hard realities. Soul music for sole survivors."Jeffreys's musical eclecticism is matched by vocal versatility that critics suggest can range from swagger to cool intimacy. Rolling Stone's Jim Farber wrote that Jeffreys blended "the sardonic cadence of Lou Reed" and the "theatrical blast" of Bruce Springsteen; others note a relaxed register recalling Johnny Nash or Bill Withers. New York Times rock critic Robert Palmer contended that performance lay at the heart of Jeffreys's music: an energetic style "compounded of reggae influences, basic guitar rock, Mick Jaggerish self‐delectation, New York City street references, and a willingness to parade his private humiliations and victories before an audience in a potentially self-lacerating way." In addition to Jagger, Jeffrey's stage presence has been likened to the prowling authority of Arthur Lee of Love.
Solo career, 1973–1983
Despite the commercial failure of the Grinder's Switch record, Jeffreys landed a solo contract with Atlantic Records, which yielded the folk- and jazz-flavored album Garland Jeffreys, with guests Dr. John, David Bromberg and David Newman. It more fully introduced his writing in songs that critics characterized as witty, mordant observations of urban blight and bittersweet experience—among them, "Harlem Bound," the identity-themed "Ballad of Me," and the early reggae tune, "Bound to Get Ahead Someday!" Shortly after, he released the single, "Wild in the Streets". Both album and single received positive critical attention but were commercially unsuccessful; four years later the track would become his best-known and most-played song.After a stint on the Arista label produced only a failed single, Jeffreys signed with A&M Records. With the release of Ghost Writer, the mainstream music press—Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, PBS Soundstage—declared Jeffreys poised for breakout stardom. The album was a harder-rocking mixture paralleling his heritage, with confident reggae cut with explorations of flamenco and soul, and the FM staples "Wild in the Streets" and "Rough and Ready". Critics identified an overriding theme of determination that united the collection's strongly autobiographical subjects: coming of age and making it in the city, racial separatism, interracial romance, and the pain of urban childhood. Robert Hilburn likened the album "to a cross-town bus ride" with "social dissection reminiscent at times to James Baldwin's Another Country or Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets"; Stephen Holden called it possibly "the quintessential New York rock record."
Jeffrey's follow-up, One-Eyed Jack struggled to live up to the expectations set by Ghost Writer, receiving mixed reviews. Dedicated to his boyhood idol, Jackie Robinson, the album presented a tonal contrast. Side one offered brighter, optimistic pop-oriented tracks focused on the search for love, like the soul-disco-flavored "She Didn't Lie." Side two included personal, urban songs with biting lyrics that tapped into 1960s rock, funk and reggae. Critics regarded American Boy & Girl as a more energetic comeback album that updated the Ghost Writer theme of troubled children. Songs like the title track, "City Kids" and "Night of the Living Dead" centered on tough portraits of teen runaways and outsiders taking refuge in drugs and crime in order to survive abuse, neglect and street life. Jeffreys balanced those songs with soothing, emotive tunes of hope and inspiration, such as "Shoot the Moonlight Out" and "Matador," a European hit that charted in several countries' top fives and spurred a successful tour. Jeff Nesin of Creem characterized the album as "urban and urbane," difficult, and slow to reveal.
Escape Artist, yielded Jeffreys's first U.S. commercial success, making the top forty chart, garnering FM airplay for the songs "Modern Lovers," "R.O.C.K." and a cover of the garage-rock classic "96 Tears", and landing on Time Magazine's list of the year's 10 best pop albums. With backing by the UK group The Rumour, Roy Bittan and Danny Federici of the E Street Band, and guests including David Johansen, Lou Reed, G.E. Smith, Adrian Belew and Nona Hendryx, the album was a harder rocking set. Its songs explored growing up in a tough community, music as an escape, and failed romance. Jay Cocks called them anthems for "hard, hopeless downtown orphans whose hustle along the thin edge becomes a musical metaphor for political desperation and spiritual desolation"; he described their sound as "buttressed by a flair for elegant concert showmanship and a voice that sounds like Frankie Lymon with a college education." Jeffreys supported the album with a tour backed by The Rumour that was captured on an album released the same year, Rock 'n' Roll Adult.
With expectations high, Jeffreys put out Guts for Love, a departure album with its more polished sound and thematic shift from social concern to love. It received a mixed reception, with some reviewers deeming it a cohesive, personal effort with a "snappy, live feel" and others finding the more radio-friendly production slick and less edgy than previous work.
Solo career, 1990s
After taking a hiatus from recording, Jeffreys released two new albums in the 1990s, Don't Call Me Buckwheat and Wildlife Dictionary, and a collection of previous releases, Matador & More....Don't Call Me Buckwheat was a concept album that channeled reflections and frustrations about the complexities of race in America while also expressing a sense of inner satisfaction and acceptance. The title was prompted by an incident at a baseball game at Shea Stadium during which, after standing to get a hotdog, Jeffreys was verbally accosted by a heckler who shouted, "Hey Buckwheat, sit down!" The racial epithet stuck with him, spurring several songs, including the title track, "Color Line," "I Was Afraid of Malcolm" and "Racial Repertoire," which examined code-switching. New Yorker critic Ben Greenman described the album as an "essayistic and autobiographical" consideration of Jeffreys's "mixed-race upbringing in Brooklyn, the civil-rights era, and the integrationist power of popular music." It included "Hail Hail Rock 'n' Roll," a tribute to black rock 'n' roll pioneers that reached No. 11 in Germany and broke into the UK Singles Chart.
On Wildlife Dictionary, Jeffreys shifted back to love and sex in songs like "Afrodiziak," "Love Jones," "Original Lust" and "Temptation." The album featured a polished production with a 1970s soul influence in its beats, grooves and riffs. One of the tracks, "Sexuality," was featured in a Armani ad campaign. After the birth of his daughter Savannah in 1997, Jeffreys took time off from recording to be a full-time father.