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East Bay jazz singer Ed Reed has been honored with a "Jazz Hero" award by the Jazz Journalists Association in a recent awards ceremony.

The 82-year-old Reed was honored on Saturday, June 11 in a "satellite" celebration at The Jazzschool in Berkeley as part of the 15th annual JJA Jazz Awards at the City Winery in New York City.

More than 250 jazz journalists, musicians, record company activists and devotees attended the New York City event, with dozens in parties in other cities and more than 8,000 views recorded by UStream, where live video of the event was webcast around the country.

Reed's debut recording, "Ed Reed Sings Love Stories" (released on the singer's own Blue Shorts label in 2007) presented a remarkable introduction for the singer, featuring Reed's open, friendly voice in a relaxed ballad setting, framed by a sensitive and agile quartet, including the versatile Peck Allmond on trumpet, tenor sax, flutes and clarinets, Gary Fisher on piano, bassist John Wiitala, and drum master Eddie Marshall. 

Reed returned in 2010 with his sophomore recording, "The Song Is You," and is releasing his third CD, "Born to Be Blue," in June 2011.

In a profile of Reed on JazzWest when "Love Stories" was first released in 2007, critic Forrest Dylan Bryant wrote that "Reed's performances are warm, soft at the edges and full of character. He keeps things unpredictable, making surprising jumps up and down the register, while imbuing his delivery with an emotional quality that many young singers simply lack the life experience to match."

From Cleveland to Los Angeles

Reed's was born on February 2, 1929 in Cleveland, OH. "My mother was a singer too, and we sang all the time," he says. A domestic by profession, Reed's mother had operatic talent; his father worked as a chauffeur in Cleveland, and later as a waiter on the Southern Pacific railway.

After moving to Los Angeles in the 1930s, Reed became further immersed in music. By age eleven, he was getting informal lessons from bassist Charles Mingus, whose sister lived across the street. "He used to babysit for her, and the music was always going, him bowing and playing on top of records and stuff. Whenever Charles showed up, I was there. He taught me how to listen to changes, and how to know where I was in a tune."

Reed's favorite musicians in those years were horn players with a sensitive side. "I got into Johnny Hodges, really early," he says. "'Sentimental Lady,' 'Passion Flower'… that stuff was just gorgeous. There was a big Lester Young/Coleman Hawkins battle going in those days; I was on the Lester Young side. He sounded like a singer to me."

Digging the Heyday of L.A.'s Central Avenue

The 1940s saw the heyday of Los Angeles' Central Avenue scene, a rich stew of bebop and r&b that would make stars of some of Reed's classmates and acquaintances, including singer Little Esther Philips and sax blaster Big Jay McNeely. Reed remembers it fondly. "It was like heaven. I thought these people were supremely happy and that they had everything. I just wanted to be a part of that, it was so hip."

At about this same time — the end of the Second World War — Reed started down a path that would derail his life for decades. Dissatisfied with high school, Reed dropped out, left home and enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17... where he became addicted to heroin.

"You know, I had such a tiny ego, no sense of self," Reed says. "I needed to be with people. I thought [shooting up] was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of, but they said if I didn't do it I couldn't hang with them anymore, so there I was. I just wanted to please people so they'd treat me nice."

Sabotaged by Drugs and a Stint in Prison

In 1951, Reed went to prison on drug charges, the first of four incarcerations in San Quentin and Folsom over the next decade and a half.

"I served four stints in San Quentin and Folsom prisons on drug-related charges," recalls Reed in his online biography. "I think, partly due to my love of jazz, I was able to survive those ordeals. In two of my incarcerations, I was a featured singer in the warden's show, performing with an inmate big band with Art Pepper soloing on all of my tunes. When I wasn't doing time, I did many 'open mikes' with jazz greats like Wardell Gray, Art Farmer, Hampton Hawes, Dexter Gordon, and others.

"I had been singing all my life, and yet, I had never consciously thought of myself as a singer until I met [guitarist] Ralph Bravo in the late 50's," says Reed. 

It was Bravo who first convinced Reed that he had real talent as a singer. "I'd always felt like a beggar around musicians," Reed explains. "Nobody had ever really encouraged me to keep singing. They'd say, 'that wasn't bad, man... okay, let's do an instrumental!' But now here this guy was coming around looking for me, wanting to go play some tunes. For the first time I felt like a partner instead of a hanger-on." But Bravo was also a heroin addict, and the drug soon claimed his life.

Life (and Jazz) After San Quentin

After Reed's final release from San Quentin in 1966, music faded into the background as he developed a strong interest in social justice issues, helping to run a day care center for the children of migrant laborers in Sacramento, working for the Catholic Welfare Bureau and getting involved in community development projects in Los Angeles. Ironically, Reed was instrumental in creating one of California's first methadone treatment programs for heroin addicts — only to become a client himself.

It wasn't until 1986 that Reed managed to kick his habit, after 25 unsuccessful attempts. "I finally got that heroin wasn't taking me anyplace and I didn't have to keep doing it," he says. Reed put his experience to use as an educator and program planner for HMOs and other health care organizations, a career he maintains to this day.

"In 1986," says Reed, "after 40 years of drug addiction, I finally got into a program of drug and alcohol recovery, which led me to the 'day job' I love: program planning, development, training, and creating a successful health education lecture series I call 'The Art And Practice Of Living Well'. This work is as important to me as music. The lecture series has been a positive influence on hundreds of people. For me, that work is all about joy and appreciation of our individual gifts."

At the suggestion of his wife Diane, Reed attended Jazz Camp West in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2005, where he caught the ear of instructor Peck Allmond. "Peck was the one who told me I had to record," Reed says. "He latched onto me and wouldn't let go! He sent me to [producer] Bud Spangler, and those two and my wife stood me up in front of a mic in a studio."

Songs That Say Something Lyrically

Reed says he has always preferred songs with depth and substance. "I don't like simple stuff," he declares. "It's gotta have something in it other than mairzy doats and dozy doats. I'm interested in harmonic complexity and lyrical quirkiness. I want a song to say something lyrically."

Looking back, Reed regards his past mistakes as an object lesson for others. "If you're gonna have a life, you have to be the one who decides how that life is gonna be," he told JazzWest. "It took me 50 years to figure that out, and that's what I teach folks today: you have to sort out who you are, what your purpose is, what you want and where you're going, what help you need, what kind of people you want in your life. Once you have that sort of clarity, then you can start to be the person you want to be, instead of a victim."