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Obit: Herb Reed, the last surviving original member of the Platters, has died. He was 83 and had been suffering from ill health:
The only band member to feature on all of the Platters' official recordings, Reed supplied bass vocal parts for a number of the group's most enduring hits, including "Only You (And You Alone)," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "The Great Pretender." As the last surviving member of both the group's original lineup and its classic Tony Williams-led incarnation, Reed fought a lengthy legal battle to retain superior rights to the group name, which were finally granted to him in 2011. He had been regularly touring with a combo dubbed Herb Reed's Platters until very recently.
And this:
After a tabloid scandal in 1959, the group effectively ceased to be a major recording act and began splintering into a number of competing groups, with variations of the Platters name, on the touring circuit. Reed initially sang with Buck Ram's Platters, which recorded several modest comeback singles in the late '60s._____
By the 1980s, the splintering had reached such a point that numerous groups containing no members of the 1950s-era lineup of the group could be found touring as the Platters. Following decades of legal wrangling, Reed finally regained control of the group's name last year, though he had been performing in various versions of the group consistently since its founding.
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