He wasn’t a very good actor. He wasn’t a very good singer. He was drop-dead gorgeous.

“Tom Hanks at Tribeca 2016.” – Vulture, 04/28/2016

He never made it higher then No. 96 in the Billboard charts... However, Reed’s music caught on in South America, and by the late-1960s he had achieved major stardom in Chile and Argentina.

“The Elvis of East Germany.” – The Observer, 06/13/16

He got on a plane and flew down to Chile, and when he landed in Santiago, there were thousands of people at the airport.

He asked the stewardess, “Who’s on the plane? Why are all these people at the airport?”

And they said, “You are. You are el gringo.”

And he walked from obscurity into the most wild success you could possibly have, in the wink of an eye.

“Tom Hanks at Tribeca 2016.” – Vulture, 04/28/2016

In the far-left politics of mid-1960s South America, he also found meaning and a life-mission.

“The Elvis of East Germany.” – The Observer, 06/13/16


BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN


COLD WAR COWBOY 


THE STRANGE LIFE AND DEATH OF DEAN REED

DEAR JERRY: In the early 1960s, most of my girl friends were crazy about Ricky, Frankie, and Fabian. But the teen idol I adored most was Dean Reed. He resembled a young Robert Redford. Dean didn’t have nearly as many hits in America as the others, but he did appear on several Bandstand-type TV shows. Then he just vanished, and I’ve never heard a thing about him since. Plus, we never hear any of his songs on the radio, especially “The Search,” “Our Summer Romance,” and “I Wonder.” Any idea what happened to Dean Reed?

Clarice Hoover,

Racine, Wisconsine

“Ask Mr. Music” - Jerry Osborne, 04/11/2011


















You can keep the Beatles and forget Frank Sinatra, The Led Zeppelin are nowhere in the Kremlin, man. In the Communist Party, The Who are merely, the who? Mick Jagger, the Pink Floyd and Elvis Presley are forbidden practitioners of bourgeois culture.

But Dean Reed, the famous American pop star and heartthrob of the Soviet masses, is something else again.

Dean who?
“He’s 2nd Most Famous American In Soviet After President Ford.” -
UPI, 07/01/1976























































































 American folk singer Dean Reed is a freedom fighter in the eyes of Soviet youth, a guitar-strumming balladeer whose songs are silenced by U.S. political repression.

Dean who?
“Protest singer hero to Soviets.” -
AP, 05/11/1978










































BESbswyBESbswy