Books and films about Dean/Bücher und Filme über Dean

Colorado Rocks!

A Half-Century of Music in Colorado

by G. Brown

Paperback, 179 pages, Pruett Publishing Company, 2004.
ISBN: 0871089300

Chapter about Dean Reed: pg. 2-3

Colorado Rocks!
Five Decades of Rock Music in Colorado

"G. Brown has navigated the surprising and eccentric Rocky Mountain musical landscape for decades. His storied sense of humor and eye for illuminating detail intersect in Colorado Rocks! Within this volume you will come to know the yearning within Lothar & the Hand People's electromagnetic soul, the name of the artist who probably should not have been driving at Nederland's Caribou Ranch, and anecdotes so steamy, they could melt the snow off of Supertramp's piano."
- Bret Sanders of KBCO, 97.3 FM

[...] There's Dean Reed, a University of Colorado student whose American success topped out with a 1959 single that hit No. 96 on the Billboard charts. In Russia, though, the left-leaning singer became a monstrous success and was known as "the Red Elvis." More successful - but just barely - were the Astronauts, a Boulder-based surf band landing a tune at No. 94 on the charts in 1963. [...]
- Matt Sebastian, Camera Music Writer, August 15, 2004

About The Author

G. Brown considers himself a Colorado native and recieved a B.S. degree in journalism from the University of Colorado. For twenty-six years, G. wrote about popular music for The Denver Post. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, National Lampoon, and numerous other magazines. His first book, "How To Survive Your College Daze," was published by New View Press in 1982. He has also served stints in radio (area stations KAZY, KBPI, KTCL and KHOW) and television (as Uncle G., he hosted the Fox 31 Kids Club during the height of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers mania). Currently the morning guy and music director at KCUV, AM 1510, Colorado's Voice for Americana, he lives peacefully with his wife Bridget and dog Stella in Louisville

www.pruettpublishing.com

Introduction

[...] He [Brown] even retraces the stange journey of Coloradan Dean Reed, who, though virtually unknown in his homeland, became one of the brightest stars in music behind the Iron Curtain. [...]
Dick Kreck, The Denver Post, February 2004

page 2-3

DEAN REED

He never attained eminence in America. Even in Colorado, where he was born and raised, he was a virtual unknown.

But in the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc countries, Dean Reed was a superstar entertainer, bigger than Elvis Presley - so famous, shops sold his image alongside that of Joseph Stalin.

Reed graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in 1956. He briefly studied meteorology at the University of Colorado in Boulder and was known for his local performances. He dropped out and, thinking positively, decided to become a guitar-singing folk hero. Capitol Records was fishing for fresh talent and signed him to a recording contract in 1958.

Reed made a few marginally successful folk-pop singels - "The Search" reached No. 96 on Billboard's Hot 100 in March 1959 - and he boasted a Colorado fan club of 6,000. By 1960, the good-looking innocent had gone to Hollywood for a screen test.

He played some bit parts in television and movies, but he was impatient with his lack of wealth, position, and fame. He heard that his song "Our Summer Romance" had hit the top of the charts in Chile and Argentina. He took off for South America in 1962, and his boyish, blue-eyed looks made him a teen idol.

But Reed was falling in love with leftist politics, and he became converted to the international peace movement. He traveled with his guitar and cast himself as a political good guy, picketing embassies and singing for the workers, who bought the slogans he stitched in between the songs.

The head of Komsomol, the Soviet youth organization, stumbled upon Reed. Komsomol was looking for something that could stop the mass defection of young Communists to the decadent music of the West. Melodiya, the state recording company, had never before released a rock 'n' roll record, but the handsome, honey-voiced Reed got a recording contract.

Hits in the Soviet Union followed - his signature tune was "Ghost Riders in the Sky" - and his albums sold in the hundreds of thousands across the Eastern bloc. The first Dean Reed tour of the Soviet Union in 1966 was like Beatlemania. His voice was light and he couldn't play the guitar very well, but the American singer electrified the Soviet kids, singing show tunes, wearing silky clothes, moving like a star. One of his concerts drew 60,000 fans.

The propaganda stories said that Reed was a sensation in his native land but that he had been brutally rejected for his politics. Dubbed "the Red Elvis," he was the only American to receive the Lenin Prize for art.

Reed played the global radical circuit, becoming friends with Salvador Allende in Chile and meeting with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and he was frequently pictured in freedom-fighter mode.

The entertainer settled in East Berlin and was adored throughout the 1970s. He was mobbed when he appeared in public. He began making movies and starred in dozens of foreign-language spaghetti westerns. "Sing Cowboy Sing" was seen by a million East Germans.

But Reed missed his friends in Colorado. He wrote them long tracts about how the Communist sytem would improve people's lives. "Yes we lack certain things in East Germany - hamburgers, for example," he joked wistfully.

The Communist world changed in the 1980s, and Reed's time passed. In the age of glasnost, he was no more than a curiositiy from the Cold War. He had kept his U.S. passport and remained an American citizen. In the fall of 1985, he returned to the United States for the Denver International Film Festival's showing of American Rebel, an American-produced documentary of his life.

It wasn't 1962 anymore. Rural Wheat Ridge had been eaten by Denver's urban sprawl. "The only buildings I recognize are those I've seen on 'Dynasty,'" he said.

Mike Wallace interviewed Reed in East Berlin for "60 Minutes." Reed thought it would be his ticket back to America, but he made a mistake by defending the Berlin Wall. His long-standing sympathies left him reviled by many in his home country.

In June 1986, the forty-seven-year-old Reed's story came to a mysterious end. He was found dead in an East German lake near his home. Accidental death by drowning was the official verdict. Reed's daughter later alleged that East Germany agents had killed him. His mother moved his remains to Green Mountain Cemetery in Boulder.

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