Vocalist Ed Reed will perform in Seattle at the JazzScapes House Concert Series on Friday, January 18, at 7:30pm, accompanied by Portland pianist Randy Porter.
For more information, email [email protected].
Ed Reed made his recording debut just before his 78th birthday in 2007 with the widely acclaimed “Ed Reed Sings Love Stories”. Six years later (2013) his 4th CD, “I’m A Shy Guy” is a tribute to the 1940s music of the Nat “King” Cole Trio and was released to high critical acclaim, including a 4-star DownBeat review and selection as a DownBeat Editor’s Pick.
Ed was born on February 2, 1929, in Cleveland, Ohio. At age 11, Reed learned how to sing to chord changes from his neighbor’s younger brother, then-teenage bassist Charles Mingus. At 17, he dropped out of school, ran away from home, and joined the army. He sold marijuana to supplement his meager military income and started to use heroin. After a general discharge, Ed started singing but his addiction to drugs quickly undermined his singing career. Ed spent more than a decade of his life behind bars for crimes related to heroin addiction, yet those years weren’t entirely wasted (pun intended), as he had the opportunity to rub shoulders—and even perform—with such jazz greats as Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Frank Morgan, and Frank Butler. Ed has been clean and sober for the past 27 years and is a health educator working with addicts, alcoholics, and their families.
In just a few short years, Ed Reed’s music has been critically acclaimed, reviewed in numerous print and online jazz publications (including Downbeat, Jazziz, and JazzTimes to name a few), He was a guest on Marian McPartland’s icionic “Piano Jazz” radio show on NPR stations in 2008, was profiled in the Wall Street Journal in June 2009, and placed in the Male Vocalist Rising Star category of the Downbeat Critic’s Poll in 5 out of the last 6 years.