New York
singer/songwriter
Garland Jeffreys
made his disc debut as the leader of the band
Grinder's Switch
on
Vanguard Records
in 1970. By the evidence of its ten
Jeffreys
-composed songs, he and the group had spent a lot of time listening to
the Band
's
Music from Big Pink
and the batch of songs
Bob Dylan
had developed with
in the late '60s, including
"The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)."
,
Ernest Corallo
, and
Stan Szelest
approximated
's rough vocal trio of
Levon Helm
Rick Danko
Richard Manuel
, and the
country-rock
musical arrangements, with their prominent organ and piano work by
Szelest
, also strongly recalled the sound of
. (
actually joined a later lineup of
, appearing on their 1993 album,
Jericho
.)
had some clever and amusing things to say in his lyrics, marking him as the
he would develop into later. But upon release,
Garland Jeffreys and Grinder's Switch
was so much of a clone of
that it was hard to separate it out as the work of an independent entity. ~ William Ruhlmann