All posts tagged with: Garland Jeffreys

Garland Jeffreys

July 12, 2008 | Filed Under Music | 2 Comments

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Our good friend Wikipedia puts is succinctly: Garland Jeffreys is an African-American and Puerto Rican singer-songwriter from Brooklyn. Is that hyphenated enough? In actuality, he was one of the best singer-songwriter’s to come out of New York. And tragically underrated. He had the unfortunate luck of having his three greatest records of rock-soul-latin boogie come out at the end of 70s, when punk and new wave was making all the noise. He had a hit with the classic “Wild In The Streets” of the Ghost Writer album but the pop charts eluded him. Ghost Writer, One-Eyed Jacks and American Boy and Girl were deft forays into the back alleys of Brooklyn and the racial tensions all over the city. He could be as romantic (“New York Skyline”) as he could be bleak. One of my favorites - “City Kids” from American Boy And Girl – is a harrowing, eyes wide open account of being a poor teenager trying to get by on the streets of the city: “and I’m only fifteen years old/I could be black/And I could be white/But for sure I’m young and bold.” Then the sax brings you to the break, as he talks about sitting around listening to jazz while everybody gets high, and then he sings “shooting dope, shooting dope” about twenty times to be sure you get the point. And the music! How can you go wrong with Dr. John, Steve Gadd, Anton Fig, Michael Brecker, Roy Bittan, Danny Federici and countless other luminaries of the industry playing along?

But that’s the bitch of it. In a world where Vanilla Ice can still make records, none of those Garland Jeffreys albums are available on CD. The CD I’m showing you here is from 2007 and is called I’m Alive. It’s sort of a ‘best of’ collection with a few new cuts thrown in. It was only released overseas and I found it in the cut-out racks at the Virgin Megastore in Abu Dhabi. A long way to go for an American singer from the streets of New York.

He stills plays around the area and occasionally shows up at the Jersey Shore. Check out his website:

http://www.garlandjeffreys.com/