Herb Reed, Last of the Original Platters, Dies at 83
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: June 5, 2012
Herb Reed, the last surviving member of the Platters, one of the first
pop groups to break the color barrier in the 1950s with crossover hits
like “Only You,” “The Great Pretender” and a soaring street-corner
version of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” died on Monday in Boston. He was
83.
The cause was lung disease, said his manager, Fred Balboni.
Mr. Reed was credited with naming the group in 1953 (“platters” was disc
jockey lingo for vinyl records) when he and a group of friends in Los
Angeles began singing a cappella in amateur contests. The core of the original group
— Mr. Reed, David Lynch and the lead singer, Tony Williams — later
joined with Paul Robi and a 15-year-old girl named Zola Taylor to form
the quintet that recorded “Only You” in 1955, the first in a string of hits.
Mr. Reed became the group’s most enduring presence. As original members
were replaced, he remained, singing bass on all of the 400 recordings
the group made during its peak years, including four that reached No. 1
on the Billboard singles chart: “The Great Pretender”
(1955), “My Prayer” (1956), “Twilight Time” (1958) and “Smoke Gets in
Your Eyes” (1958). He continued performing until 2010, and a year later
he won a court battle over the rights to the Platters name.
In the tradition of black singing groups like the Mills Brothers and the
Ink Spots, the Platters used highly polished harmonies and had a
musical sophistication that helped their records gain acceptance on
mainstream radio at a time when racial divisions, though loosening, were
still being observed in the record business. The Platters’ early
records, like those of many black artists, had color-coded labels —
usually orange, sometimes purple — to alert D.J.’s that they were “race
records,” something that effectively barred them from the air in parts
of the South. (The term was later changed to “rhythm and blues.”)
Jay Warner, in “The Billboard Book of Singing Groups,” credited the
group’s songwriter and manager, Buck Ram, with persuading its label,
Mercury Records, to market the Platters without regard to the race
divide. Mr. Ram’s persistence, Mr. Warner wrote, “convinced Mercury to
continue promoting the black group as if they were a pop white act.”
Still, Mr. Reed told interviewers, he found conditions on the road
difficult during the ’50s and early ’60s, especially in the South, where
the Platters had to perform separately for white and black audiences
and were often baited or threatened by white thugs. He spoke poignantly
in a video taped interview
in 2010 about his mixed feelings about the wealth and professional
success he achieved in the ’50s, when the Platters were touring the
country, appearing on television and in the movie “Rock Around the
Clock” (1956), with Bill Haley and the Comets.
“In those days, when you had all these gigs, and the TV, and the movies,
honestly, it didn’t mean anything,” he said. “There was still so much
prejudice everywhere. How could you enjoy it? You couldn’t go anywhere
but your intimate circle. What you did is, you had your own world that
you lived in, with friends and food, you had your own nightclubs. So you
could survive.”
Herbert Reed was born into poverty in Kansas City, Mo., on Aug. 7, 1928,
and lost both his parents when he was about 13, living afterward in the
homes of various relatives. He left for Los Angeles when he was 15 and
began singing in church gospel choirs while working odd jobs. Singing in
amateur contests, he discovered he could make money doing what he liked
best.
Mr. Reed’s survivors include one son, Herbert Jr., and three grandchildren.
The Platters continued to record and tour in various incarnations until
the late ’60s. In the ’70s Mr. Reed began touring with a new ensemble of
singers, which he called the Platters. But as years passed, more and
more groups calling themselves the Platters began to appear. By the
1990s, when he began waging a legal battle to gain some control over the
use of the name, there were about 80 of them.
Mr. Reed, who once said he spent over $1 million in the legal effort,
finally won a federal court decision in 2011 giving him, as the sole
surviving member of the original group, preferential rights to the
Platters name.
“You know, a lot of people tell me to just hang it up,” Mr. Balboni, his
manager, recalled Mr. Reed saying earlier this year. “But I just cannot
do that. It’s not right to have someone steal your name. It’s just not
right. We were cheated back then, but that’s how things were done then.”