A01276 - Irene Reid, Jazz Singer and Actress in "The Wiz"

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Irene Reid (b. September 23, 1930, Savannah, Georgia – d. January 5, 2008, Bronx, New York), American jazz singer was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia. She sang in church and in high school in Georgia, and moved to New York City in 1947 after her mother died.

Toward the end of 1947, she tried out for an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and won the competition for five straight weeks. Soon after she was offered a slot as the featured vocalist with Dick Vance at the Savoy Ballroom, which she held from 1948 to 1950.

In 1961–62, Reid sang with Count Basie's Count orchestra, and recorded for Verve Records. Her debut for Verve, Room for One More (1965), arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder.  

Reid later performed in a Broadw.ay production of the musical The Wiz. where she briefly joined the cast as the wicked witch Evillene, the role originated by Mabel King.  Additionally, she sang with Carmen, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, and B. B. King.  Reid receded from fame in the 1970s and 1980s, but launched a comeback near the end of that decade. She appeared at the Savannah Jazz Festival in 1991, 1994, and 1996.

In 1997, after two decades spent largely under the show-business radar, Ms. Reid began recording for the small Savant label with the organist Charles Earland. Her album “Million Dollar Secret” was the first of six she released as a leader in her last years — more than she had in her entire career up to that time. She also worked frequently at Smoke, the Lenox Lounge and other New York nightclubs until a few years before her death, when health problems forced her to stop performing.

She died on January 5, 2008, from a cardiac arrest, in the Bronx, New York, at the age of 77.

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Irene Reid, Singer, Bandleader and Actress, Dies at 77

By Peter Keepnews

• Jan. 12, 2008

Irene Reid, a singer who toured and recorded with Count Basie’s band and appeared on Broadway in “The Wiz,” died last Saturday in the Bronx. She was 77.

The cause was cardiac arrest, said Wendy Oxenhorn, director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which had been helping to provide Ms. Reid with health care for more than a decade.

A jazz vocalist whose style was heavily laced with elements of gospel and the blues, Ms. Reid never achieved as much success as contemporaries like Dinah Washington and Esther Phillips who took a similar approach. But she worked steadily, and she finished her life on a high note with a surprising career resurgence. Born in Savannah, Ga., on Sept. 23, 1930, Ms. Reid began singing in a church choir there and moved to New York in 1947 to pursue a singing career. After winning the Apollo Theater’s amateur contest several times, she spent two years with the Dick Vance band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem before going out on her own.

She joined the Basie band in 1961 and stayed for a year, then formed her own small group, Irene Reid and Company, and recorded two big-band albums for Verve, one of the leading jazz labels of the period. But probably her most prominent job in the post-Basie years was on Broadway, where she briefly joined the cast of “The Wiz” as the wicked witch Evillene, the role originated by Mabel King.

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In 1997, after two decades spent largely under the show-business radar, Ms. Reid began recording for the small Savant label with the organist Charles Earland. Her album “Million Dollar Secret” was the first of six she released as a leader in her last years — more than she had in her entire career up to that time. She also worked frequently at Smoke, the Lenox Lounge and other New York nightclubs until a few years ago, when health problems forced her to stop performing. She is survived by a daughter, Gwendolyn Reid; four sons, Michael Leon Redfield, Bernard Redfield, James Raymond Reid and Gregory Reid; 13 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren.