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Garland Jeffreys (born 1943 in Brooklyn, New York) is an African-American and Puerto Rican singer-songwriter. His music is a unique blend of rock and roll, reggae, blues and soul.
Jeffreys is from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Jeffreys majored in arts at Syracuse University where he met Lou Reed before The Velvet Underground became active. In 1966, Jeffreys played in Manhattan nightclubs. Grinder's Switch, a group founded by him in 1969, released one album before breaking up in 1970. In 1973, he released his first solo album, Garland Jeffreys, on Atlantic Records.
Jeffreys played guitar on John Cale's 1969 debut solo album Vintage Violence and contributed the song "Fairweather Friend".
Around the same time Atlantic also released a 45 RPM single of a song called "Wild in the Streets" that was not included on the LP. The track received airplay on progressive FM album-oriented rock stations and has become one of his best-known songs. Later, in 1977 when Garland recorded his Ghost Writer album for A&M Records, the Atlantic Records version of "Wild In The Streets" was included on side two.
"Wild In The Streets" has been covered by several artists, including:
• The Circle Jerks, from the album Wild In The Streets
• Chris Spedding, from the album Hurt
• British Lions, from the album British Lions
• Hot Water Music, from the album Til the Wheels Fall Off
Jeffreys is featured in the 2003 documentary Soul of a Man, directed by Wim Wenders as the fourth installment of the documentary film series "The Blues" produced by Martin Scorsese. The film explores the musical careers of blues musicians Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir.
He was featured on the cover of Beyond Race magazine in February 2007. Jeffreys is currently touring again and has been very active on MySpace.
He has a 13-year-old daughter named Savannah Jeffreys who is an aspiring singer-songwriter as well, who has many YouTube videos of her own songs .
