My guest is Claire Jeffreys who has made her directorial debut with a documentary about her husband Garland Jeffreys. It’s currently available to stream on Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video and YouTube.

In the late 1970s, many of music’s top tastemakers felt sure Garland Jeffreys would become the next big thing. Rolling Stone named him the “most promising artist” of 1977. The prestigious PBS program Soundstage predicted he would become “the next performer to lay claim to superstardom.” 

That sense of missed opportunity forms the emotional core of a new documentary about the star titled “Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between“. The title refers both to Jeffreys’ musical style — an uncategorizable mix of rock, reggae, and soul — and to his identity as the mixed-race son of a Black father and a Puerto Rican mother who struggled to find his place in the overwhelmingly white world of ’70s and ’80s rock. With fellow artists Laurie Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, Harvey Keitel, Vernon Reid, Alejandro Escovedo, Graham Parker, writers Robert Christgau, David Hajdu, Jamaica Kincaid and Roger Guenveur Smith, this is a warm and intimate look at an artist who belongs in the conversation.