Susan Reed. Learned folk songs from Abbey actors.
Susan Reed, singer, harpist and zitheris, was born in New York City on January 11, 1926. She delighted nightclub and radio audiences in the years after World War II. A standout Irish folk performer in such New York venues as Cafe Society, where she starred for two years, and the Blue Angel, Susan Reed toured the country making 107 concert appearances alone in one year that brought her the title “America’s Concert Favorite.” She was also a regular at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York and at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, and she performed in leading nightclubs throughout the country, including Chicago’s Palmer House. After a performance there, Chicago Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy labeled her “The heroine of every song she sang.”
Reed also starred with drummer Gene Krupa in the Columbia musical Glamor Girl (1948) and in numerous TV shows of the period, including The Firestone Hour. On Broadway, she starred in the 1946 Max Liebman production of Billy the Kid and co-starred with her husband James Karen in regional theater productions of Brigadoon and Finnian’s Rainbow. She also appeared in concert with poet/performer Carl Sandburg, a family friend who played the guitar and sang.
She made several albums for Columbia Records and RCA Red Seal, including the two-volume Folk Songs and Ballads, which featured such classics as Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair and Greensleeves. She also recorded the folk classic Songs of the Auvergn. She was raised by her father Daniel Reed, the author of the play Scarlet Sister Mary, which starred Ethel Barrymore on Broadway, and her mother, Isadora Bennett, a Martha Graham producer. Her grandfather, Clarence Bennett, was a theatrical producer with his own stock company in the Midwest. According to the Wall Street Journal obit:
“Members of the Abbey Theater Company of Dublin, often visited the Reeds when the company toured in the United States. Actors and musicians from this company, including Ralph Cullinan and Farrell Pelly, introduced Reed to Irish folk music. She was so deeply influenced by these performers and their musical tradition that she began playing the Irish harp and learning Irish folk songs. In just a few years, Reed had mastered the instrument; she had also learned to play the zither and the Appalachian autoharp.”
Victim of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Susan Reed died on April 25 of natural causes at a nursing home in Greenport, N.Y. She was 84. She was survived by a son, Reed Karen, and two grandchildren.
Youtube recording of three songs by Susan Reed on 1940s vintage radio show. Youtube Link