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• Garland Jeffreys

Garland Jeffreys was a man of many worlds. The songwriter was born in 1943 and raised in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, with a mix of Black, Puerto Rican and white heritage. His music was similarly diverse, fusing disparate styles long before that became the norm and earning the admiration of some of the most influential artists of his era, including Lou Reed. Still, while Jeffreys straddled myriad genres, from rock to reggae, he didn't belong to any of them. Audiences and record companies didn't know what to do with him. So the misfit musician dubbed himself "the King of In Between."

Throughout his long career, which started in 1970 with the band Grinder's Switch, Jeffreys struggled to find acceptance for his music. In addition to pushing stylistic boundaries, his songs touched on subject matter that often made mainstream listeners uncomfortable — most notably racism, as on 1992's Don't Call Me Buckwheat. On the album's lead single, "Hail Hail Rock 'N' Roll," he sang, "Take it from me but don't you take away my liberty / Father of coal, mother of pearl / Never too Black to blush to pick up a white girl / The color of you, the color of me / You can't judge a man by looking at the marquee."

Given his talent and renown among other artists, Jeffreys should have been a star. But his refusal to play it safe, musically or lyrically, meant he was destined to be an underground legend but never more. He was a songwriter's songwriter loved by the likes of Reed and Bruce Springsteen but utterly unknown to the casual music fan.

Jeffreys retired in 2019, but his wife and former manager, Claire Jeffreys, is hoping to shine a spotlight on his life and music with a new documentary she directed. Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between makes its New England debut at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival on Friday, August 23.

"To be honest, sometimes it really upset Garland that he wasn't finding this higher level of success, whatever that was," Claire said in a phone call from their New York City home. "He wanted that stardom, and there were times when he would get really down and talk about giving up on his music."

One of the key themes of The King of In Between is Garland's perseverance in the face of commercial apathy. He was too Black and too radical for white stations, but neither was he getting played on Black radio. Which isn't to say he wasn't on anyone's radar: His 1973 self-titled debut record made a lifelong fan out of then-Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau, who appears in the doc.

"Is he streetwise?" Christgau wondered in his review of the album. "Damn right — wise enough to find the streets a little scary."

Garland was also named the best new artist of 1977 by Rolling Stone after releasing his album Ghost Writer. While his gritty, no-bullshit takes on racial disparity in America and the violence of New York City in the '70s impressed critics, they didn't soar on the Billboard charts. However, his songs did sometimes find their audiences — or the other way around. His tune "Wild in the Streets," about a brutal rape and murder that happened in the Bronx in 1977, found new life as a punk and skate anthem after the Circle Jerks covered it for the 1986 cult film Thrashin'.

"One of the things this film asks that I think is important is this: What actually defines success?" Claire said. "Everyone in the business these days is obsessed with tour revenues and social media followers as opposed to, well, the music itself. With someone like Garland, a highly autobiographical songwriter holding a mirror up to American society, the metric is always going to be different."

Recent history has shown there are few better ways to reexpose forgotten musicians than a documentary. From films such as Searching for Sugar Man, which tracked the elusive Detroit singer-songwriter Rodriguez, to A Band Called Death, the 2012 documentary that reintroduced the world to the Black punk band Death, the doc treatment has become a surefire way to get the word out about underground artists. That doesn't mean they're easy to make, however.

"I wasn't too sure about the whole thing initially, but I took a meeting with Sam Pollard, a professor at NYU and a very highly regarded documentarian," Claire recalled. "That was something Garland taught me: Always take a meeting. Because you just never know! So I did, thankfully."

Much to Claire's surprise, Pollard suggested she direct the documentary, even though she had never made a film in her life. He urged her to find a good editor but was clear that she could do this herself.

"I had always heard that documentaries take forever to make and cost so much," she said. "And, being really naïve on this, I thought to myself, What's the big deal? How long could it take? I have a lot of the archival footage already.

"Oh, my goodness, they were so right," she continued. "It was one setback after another — sometimes it took years to get an interview."

After much toil and trial and error, Claire finished her debut film, complete with interviews from songwriters who achieved the sort of fame Garland always strived for. Hearing musicians such as Graham Parker, Vernon Reid and Laurie Anderson talk about her husband's achievements helped her come to peace with his career, now that it's over.

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• Clockwise from top left: Chuck D and Garland Jeffreys; Jeffreys with Bob Marley; Charles Mingus with Jeffreys

"Hearing Bruce Springsteen say in the film that [Don't Call Me Buckwheat] may have come out 30 years ago but could have come out 30 minutes ago was really powerful," she recounted. "He said no one was talking about race like Garland was, and I think that's true."

There is still one part of the film Claire isn't sure about, even though the edit is done and The King of In Between is screening and actively searching for distribution. Garland is currently suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's disease, which is why neither he nor Claire will attend the Middlebury screening.

"We weren't sure whether or not to include his illness," Claire said. "Towards the end of the film, there's a scene where Garland is sitting on a bench, and anyone who's had to deal with Alzheimer's in their life will likely look at that scene and intuit what's happening."

In the end, however, Claire decided not to cover Garland's health in the film.

"Garland had such a long career, and there are so many themes that go along with all that, which the film covers," she said. "Introducing cognitive decline and Alzheimer's, it just becomes a very different film."

In the end, Garland's story is about bravery and self-belief, Claire maintains.

"He was a biracial man living in America during a time of great tumult," she said. "But he never stopped being true to who he was and the kind of music he felt he needed to make."

To learn more about Garland and the documentary, check out kingofinbetween.com and middfilmfest.org.