Susan Reed (singer)
| Susan Reed | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Susan Catherine Reed |
| Born |
January 11, 1926 Columbia, South Carolina, United States |
| Died | April 25, 2010 (aged 84) Greenport, New York |
| Genres | Folk music |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, musician, actor |
| Years active | c.1945 - 1960s |
| Labels | RCA Victor, Columbia, Elektra |
| Notable instruments | |
| Harp, zither, autoharp | |
Susan Catherine Reed (January 11, 1926 – April 25, 2010) was an American singer, harpist, zitherist and actor. A regular on the New York folk scene, Life magazine dubbed her "the pet of Manhattan nightclubbers" in 1945.
She was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the daughter of Isadora Bennett and Daniel Reed, respectively a theater publicist and actor. Folk music collector Carl Sandburg and musician Huddie Ledbetter were family friends, as were visiting Irish actors and musicians from the Abbey Theatre Company. After she moved to New York City with her family - including her older brother Jared, who also performed - she began singing and playing the zither, harp and autoharp at private parties and for wounded soldiers convalescing in hospitals. Although she originally aspired to becoming a painter, she was discovered by Barney Josephson, owner of the Café Society club in Greenwich Village, who booked her to appear there.
Her performances of folk ballads and other traditional songs found immediate success, and she appeared on radio and TV shows with Burl Ives. She made her debut at the Town Hall in New York in 1945, at the age of nineteen, followed by a national tour. In 1947, Alan Lomax wrote of her, with Ives, Woody Guthrie and Josh White, as one of the foremost performers in the "enthusiasm for native balladry and folklore that is running through the country from coast to coast". In 1948, she appeared with Gene Krupa in the film Glamour Girl (retitled Night Club Girl in the UK), in which she played a folk-singing country girl brought to sing in New York nightclubs. The movie directly inspired English folk singers Shirley and Dolly Collins.
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