<\/p>\n
The music documentary Garland Jeffreys: The King Of In Between<\/em>, which reintroduces audiences to a masterful musician whose commercial success may never have matched his critical acclaim \u2014 but whose rich legacy is worth celebrating \u2014 has begun streaming on major platforms including Amazon\u2019s Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople that know him cannot believe that other people don\u2019t<\/em> know him,\u201d says documentary director Claire Jeffreys, the singer\u2019s longtime manager and spouse, speaking in the opening moments of the film over the backdrop of the Brooklyn-born singer\u2019s performance of \u201cConey Island Winter.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Since its completion in 2023, the documentary has been screening and gaining acclaim at film festivals across the United States and abroad, but its availability now on streaming platforms \u201cmeans everything,\u201d Jeffreys tells Billboard<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long, arduous, but ultimately rewarding journey to get here. Seeing the film stream widely is a culmination of so much passion and hard work, and I\u2019m just so thrilled it\u2019s resonating with people.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the director\u2019s close connection to her subject, Jeffreys has maintained a filmmaker\u2019s distance, while letting a cast of sources speak to her husband\u2019s long history of musically adventurous, socially aware songwriting.<\/p>\n Among those who offer testimony here are the music critics Robert Christgau and David Hajdu, longtime friend and actor Harvey Keitel, and fellow musicians including Graham Parker, Alejandro Escovedo, Vernon Reid, Laurie Anderson \u2014 and Bruce Springsteen.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s in the great singer-songwriter tradition of Dylan and Neil Young; one of the American greats,\u201d says Springsteen.<\/p>\n Garland Jeffreys, 80, raised in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was shaped by his Black, white and Puerto Rican heritage \u2014 \u201cfather of coal, mother of pearl,\u201d he once sang \u2014 absorbing early musical influences from doo-wop to jazz to 1950s rock\u2019n\u2019roll. \u201cMy background, my racial mixture, my past, the music that went through my house, it all comes out in my music,\u201d says Garland in the film.<\/p>\n The documentary takes its title from Garland\u2019s 2011 album The King of In Between. <\/em>\u201cIt\u2019s Garland\u2019s phrase and he really related to it because of his growing up biracial,\u201d Claire Jeffreys told Billboard <\/em>in a conversation before the premiere. \u201cHis way of relating to the world was shaped by being neither fish nor fowl, black nor white. He mentions in the film that radio wouldn\u2019t play him on the white stations and he wasn\u2019t being played on the Black stations. [But by] saying `the king,\u2019 he was claiming that he was still standing and still feeling like he had something to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n What Garland Jeffreys had to offer, with all his charm and intensity, was clear from the start. Laurie Anderson appears in the film because, when Garland left Brooklyn to attend Syracuse University, he became fast friends with Anderson\u2019s husband-to-be, Lou Reed.<\/p>\n \u201cLou really admired Garland, as well as loved him,\u201d says Anderson. (On his 2017 album 14 Steps to Harlem<\/em>, Garland covered the Velvet Underground\u2019s \u201cWaiting For the Man\u201d in tribute to his longtime friend.)<\/p>\n In 1970, Garland made his recording debut as part of the group Grinder\u2019s Switch, with its musical echoes of The Band. But it was his own self-titled solo debut album on Atlantic Records three years later that signaled the arrival of a singular musical force.<\/p>\n Writing in The Village Voice,<\/em> Robert Christgau described the debut album\u2019s musical ambitions (\u201cStonesy blues shuffles rubbing elbows with reggae from Kingston\u201d) and declared that \u201cthis man should be given the keys to every city whose streets he walks \u2014 ours first.\u201d<\/p>\n The film captures the edginess of New York in the 1970s, an era that defined Garland\u2019s songwriting, from the \u201cheat of the summer\u201d threat of \u201cWild In The Streets\u201d (arranged and recorded with Dr. John) to the hometown romanticism of \u201cNew York Skyline.\u201d Both came from Garland\u2019s 1977 album Ghost Writer, <\/em>a collection that prompted Rolling Stone<\/em> to name him the most promising artist of that year.<\/p>\n Two years later, American Boy & Girl<\/em> contained the enchanting, reggae-tinged single \u201cMatador,\u201d which became a top five hit in several European markets but failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100. Success abroad, however, planted the seed for support Garland needed for a landmark album he released in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n As Garland tells the story in the film, he was at a New York Mets game at Shea Stadium. \u201cI was in left field, absorbed in the game, and a guy from behind me said, `Hey, buckwheat! Get the f\u2013k outa here!\u2019 It was a shock. It was very personal. And I really said to myself, `Don\u2019t call me buckwheat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t Call Me Buckwheat <\/em>arrived from Garland Jeffreys in the U.S. in April 1992, heralded in a Billboard<\/em> feature as \u201ca significant concept album that musically crosses gospel, doo-wop, rock, reggae and rap, in songs that describe a lifelong struggle with crossing color lines.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, the album had been released the previous fall in Europe by BMG International (a corporate precursor to the BMG of today) after Garland was signed and championed by a German executive, the company\u2019s senior vp of A&R, Heinz Henn.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t Call Me Buckwheat <\/em>\u201ccame out 30 years ago, it could have come out 30 minutes ago,\u201d says Springsteen in the film. \u201cI don\u2019t know of anybody who was writing about race as directly as Garland was in the early 90s.\u201d<\/p>\n Told by an interviewer at the time that the record could make listeners uncomfortable, Garland replied: \u201cThis to me is an album of hope, it\u2019s a vision of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n But Don\u2019t Call Me Buckwheat <\/em>from failed to chart in America. Musical \u201ccategorization is the reality and tyranny of the music business,\u201d critic David Hajdu says in the film, \u201cand he\u2019s been a victim of it.\u201d Beginning with The King Of In Between<\/em> in 2011, Garland began self-releasing his albums, but the documentary does not depict this journeyman artist as a victim of the music industry, nor of life.<\/p>\n The film is, in part, a love story. In a charming scene filmed in the hallway of their New York apartment, Claire and Garland Jeffreys describe their first meeting after one of his shows. Claire describes their mutual goal of achieving sobriety. And their daughter Savannah is featured both as a teenager, resisting her father\u2019s invitation to sing with him, and then in a beautiful duet in the studio with her dad, recording \u201cTime Goes Away.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2019, Garland Jeffreys announced he would stop touring. The documentary includes the celebration of his career which took place on June 29, 2019, at the original City Winery on Varick Street in Manhattan\u2019s Hudson Square neighborhood. The night\u2019s performers included, among others, Laurie Anderson, David Johansen, Chuck Prophet, Vernon Reid, Willie Nile, Suzanne Vega, and Savannah Jeffreys, who took the mic and deadpanned, \u201cSo I met Garland in 1996\u2026\u201c<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to show other people\u2019s affection and respect for him,\u201d says Claire Jeffreys of that night. \u201cSo it was overwhelming.\u201d Now her documentary has succeeded, in part, by redefining what it means to be a successful musician. \u201cIn today\u2019s world, we\u2019re so caught up in mega success or failure, there\u2019s no humility, there\u2019s no just being a working artist,\u201d she says, reflecting on her husband\u2019s rich body of work, created over nearly five decades.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes Garland would get very discouraged about where he stood, so to speak, in the pantheon of the music business. And I would say, `Garland, you\u2019ve made a living as a performer and a songwriter. You\u2019ve raised a family. That\u2019s a huge accomplishment.\u2019 I said, `I think you\u2019ve gotta claim that and own that.\u2019 And he really did get to that place in the end. And that was what I was hoping.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The music documentary Garland Jeffreys: The King Of In Between, which reintroduces audiences to a masterful musician whose commercial success may never have matched his critical acclaim \u2014 but whose rich legacy is worth celebrating \u2014 has begun streaming on major platforms including Amazon\u2019s Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube. \u201cPeople that know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1981134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[28851,355341,355344,38966,355340,355342,311257,355343],"class_list":["post-1981133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-claire-jeffreys","tag-david-hajdu","tag-film-festivals","tag-garland-jeffreys","tag-laurie-anderson","tag-new-york-mets","tag-robert-christgau"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Newly-Streaming-Documentary-Confirms-Garland-Jeffreys-Legacy-as-\u2018One-of.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1981133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1981134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}