Platters Legendary Herb Reed, one of doo-wop's greatest entertainers died on Monday 6/4/12 in a Boston area hospice. Reed's health had been in decline and he suffered with chronic lung problems, said his manager Fred Balboni. Reed was a Kansas City, Mo., native who founded the Platters in Los Angeles in 1953.
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| Herb Reed |
The act went through several personnel changes, with the most successful incarnation comprising lead tenor Tony Williams, David Lynch, Paul Robi, Herb Reed, and Zola Taylor. The group had 40 charting singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1955 and 1967, including four # 1 hits
Herb Reed, the originator, bass voice and last surviving genuine member of "Only You" and "The Great Pretender" hitmakers the Platters, died in a Boston-area hospice on Monday, reports the Associated Press. He was 83.
Reed's health had been in decline and he suffered with chronic lung problems, said his manager Fred Balboni. One of the brightest sounds back when youth was first taking over the airwaves, The Platters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, 37 years after they first banded together in Los Angeles.
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| The Platters |
1955's "The Great Pretender," the first of the group's No. 1 singles, "was also the first song by an R&B vocal group to top the pop charts, thus announcing the arrival of doo-wop," reported Rolling Stone. Their other chart-toppers were ''My Prayer," ''Twilight Time" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."
A Kansas City, Mo., native Reed came up with the group's name because radio deejays at the time referred to records as platters. The group, which began as a quartet, broke in their act by playing amateur gigs along the California coast while still keeping their day jobs. Besides Reed, the other original members were Joe Jefferson, Cornell Gunther and Alex Hodge.
According to AP, Reed, a Boston area resident since the '70s, also had homes in Atlanta and Miami. Professionally, he was the only member of the group (whose members changed over the years) to appear on all of their nearly 400 recordings, and he continued touring – doing up to 200 shows a year – until last year.
His survivors are a son, Herbert Jr., and three grandsons. Crediting his own survival to lesson learned as an impoverished child, Reed never splurged on fancy cars and the other trappings of a hit musician.
"I was poor, and I'm not ashamed to share those stories now, particularly with young people. I was so hungry I couldn't think. I would skip school because I was so hungry," he told an interviewer in 2012, reports the Boston Business Journal. "I never thought that it would keep going, and I never wanted to assume we'd keep getting checks."
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| The Platters |
The Platters formed in Los Angeles in 1953 and were initially managed by Ralph Bass. The original group (Alex Hodge, Cornell Gunter, David Lynch, Joe Jefferson, Gaynel Hodge and Herb Reed) managed to land a contract with Federal Records, but found little success. In June 1953, Gunter was replaced by lead vocalist Tony Williams. The band then released two singles with Federal Records, under the management of Ralph Bass, but found little success. The band then met music entrepreneur and songwriter Buck Ram. Ram made some changes to the lineup, most notably the addition of l female vocalist Zola Taylor; later, Alex Hodge was replaced by Paul Robi. Under Ram's guidance, the Platters recorded eight songs for Federal in the R&B/gospel style, scoring a few minor regional hits on the West Coast, and backed Tony Williams' sister, Linda Hayes, One song recorded during their Federal tenure, "Only You (And You Alone)", originally written by Ram for the Ink Spots, was deemed unreleasable by the label.
Despite their lack of chart success, the Platters were a profitable touring group, successful enough that The Penguins, coming off their #8 single "Earth Angel", asked Ram to manage them as well. With the Penguins in hand, Ram was able to parlay Mercury Records' interest into a 2-for-1 deal. To sign the Penguins, Ram insisted, Mercury also had to take the Platters. Ironically, the Penguins would never have a hit for the label.
