As you may know, I’m a big fan of New York City
singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys,
who’s been making records on and off since the 1970s. He first became popular
in the early ’70s with the song “Wild In The Streets,” and had even greater
success with his 1980 LP, Escape Artist, which got a fair amount of airplay on MTV back when MTV featured,
you know, M.
Since then, he’s put out records sporadically, in
large part because he wanted to be good father to his daughter Savannah, rather
than just another rock ’n roll guy who traveled the world, made money, and
ignored his family. That, right there, makes him pretty badass. (As an aside,
here’s an
interview with Garland and Savannah in her high school newspaper, the
Stuyvesant High School Spectator.
Your father was never that cool.)
So I was pretty jacked when he came out with his
latest album, The
King Of In Between, in late
2011. My wife and I were fortunate enough to
see him here in Chicago at the Square Roots street festival for the
legendary Old Town School of Folk Music, and we got a chance to chat with him
briefly after the show.
So, anyway, last week, after I wrote a couple of
posts about White folks using the “n-word” (here
and here),
it occurred to me that nobody has a better understanding of the issue than
Garland Jeffreys, the son of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother
who’s spent a large part of his career writing songs about race in America. So
I posted a brief piece called “Sometimes
You Just Gotta Listen,” featuring a few of his songs on that topic … and lo
and behold today, on
Facebook, Garland Jeffreys shared a link to my post and thanked me for
calling him the most honest man in rock ’n roll – which he is, by the way.
A humblebrag, I know. But let me tell you
something. It’s pretty cool to find out that somebody you admired for years
really is that guy you thought he was.
Thanks, Garland!
[Cross-posted at Angry
Black Lady Chronicles]
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