Search - Susan Reed :: Susan Reed

A gem from a bygone era

OperaCub | New England, USA | 10/08/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I grew up (in the 1960s) with Susan Reed's records, and her voice recreates that decade for me. She sings with extraordinary clarity of voice and diction. She finds and delivers the wit and the pathos of these songs. Her accompaniment on Irish hard and on zither takes some getting used to, if we're used to a fuller, more complete (and more finely tuned!) sound of guitar. The spareness, though, of the string sound here lends a sense of real folk song authenticity, without the homogenizing influence of the later folk music industry.



Reed's work is important historically as one of the voices and talents that were shut down by the paranoid political conservatism of the 1950s. Her artistic importance is self-evident.



NOW, if someone would please reissue her RCA album of folk songs and the Canteloube Songs of the Auvergne!!!!!"