Documentary Seals Garland Jeffreys' Legacy

In the 2024 documentary Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between, a journalist was quoted as saying if you hear Garland Jeffreys’ name, it either means everything to you or nothing to you. As a solo artist, Jeffreys would become a critic’s darling while earning admiration and friendship with a number of notable names ranging from Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley and fellow Syracuse alum Lou Reed to Harvey Keitel, Dr. John and David Johansen. All this while fusing together a unique meld of doo-wop, folk, reggae and rock influences that earned the Brooklyn native a greater following overseas than in his own home country. It’s a legacy Claire Jeffreys, the performer’s wife and partner of 30 years wanted to preserve when she embarked on this project as a first-time director for this film back in 2015.

“I was his manager at the time and I thought about what I could do to move the needle for someone who was an older artist and wasn’t getting any traction with a big hit or huge attendances at gigs,” Jeffreys recalled. “I spoke to someone and asked if they thought I should make a movie about him and they said I should do it. My real impetus was to bring his music to a larger audience. I had no goals beyond that. It wasn’t like I felt like it was a story that needed to be told.”

The resulting hour-plus film is a rich narrative chock full of modern-day testimonials, archival interviews with Jeffreys and a wealth of footage and pictures from throughout the Manhattan native’s personal and professional life. For Claire Jeffreys, trying to source material led to unexpected treasure troves that yielded everything from home movies dating back to her husband’s pre-fame days at Syracuse University, art school and membership in an ashram to bygone appearances on shows like Fridays and PBS’s Soundstage.

“There is this joke about what we have under the bed, which was literally reels and reels Garland had saved,” Jeffreys said. “One was a performance at the Roxy from around ’77, so we digitized that. Then there was a black and white NYU student film from his friend Phil Messina who shot Garland at the Guggenheim. That was literally under the bed from 1963 and it had never been digitized.”

Growing up as kid in the ‘50s as the product of a half Puerto Rican/half Black teen mom with an alcoholic Black father, Garland Jeffreys had a complicated relationship with race throughout his personal and professional life. An unapologetic provocateur, Jeffreys was performing in Blackface in the early ‘70s at West Village cabaret Reno Sweeney. As an artist who wasn’t easily pigeonholed, the music industry couldn’t quite figure out what to do with him despite the fact that he was named 1977’s Best New Promising Artist by Rolling Stone. And when he challenged the status quo, the industry pushed back in a way well familiar to people of color.

“I think he always felt he had his nose pressed against the glass with a giant chip on his shoulder,” Claire Jeffreys said. “When I look at his career and the opportunities that were squandered—some of them were from the industry. And some of them because he didn’t know how to navigate that world, which people to kiss up to, which people to stand up to and which people to cultivate. The racist attitude was they were giving him a shot and he should be grateful about it. I think he didn’t necessarily feel that way and that was like a red flag to a bull.”

Garland Jeffreys is currently in the final stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. And while it’s not addressed in The King of In Between, the documentary serves as his legacy. For Claire Jeffreys, her hope is viewers end up with the same gratitude for life’s gifts she feels her husband wound up with before he came down with dementia.

“Ninety percent of the time Garland was grateful he hadn’t worked a straight job since he was 25 while living and raising a family on his songwriting,” Claire said. “How many people can say that? I made a conscious decision to not include Garland’s progressive Alzheimer’s condition in the film because it would have made it a much different film and changed the message. He’s beyond the point where he can really appreciate everything that’s happening, but I do feel like on some level, he does get it and knows how much he’s appreciated.”

There will be a screening of Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between along with a Q&A with filmmaker Claire Jeffreys on September 13 at 7:30 p.m. at On the Screen at LTV, 75 Industrial Rd., Wainscott. Email info@ltveh.org to register for this event.