Consumer Guide Album

Garland Jeffreys: Garland Jeffreys [Atlantic, 1973]
A classy singer-songwriter with staying power; a classless singer-songwriter with at least two bags of tricks. "Black and white as can be" right down to his vocals, he's a living breathing advertisement for the mongrelization of the races, and it's his existential dilemma that permits Michael Cuscuna a gourmet coproduction in which Stonesy blues shuffles rub elbows with reggae from Kingston and a song about the zoo that makes Paul Simon sound like Marlin Perkins. Is he streetwise? Damn right--wise enough to find the streets a little scary. B+