Herb Reed - Telegraph Reed parted company with Buck Ram's management company in the late 1960s, forming a new group called Herb Reed of the Original Platters and his Group. Ownership of The Platters" name has become complicated over the years as new members joined and others left the group; spin-off groups were formed and courts ruled that some claims to the name were fraudulent. Reed struggled to block competition for his own shows from as many as 80 other acts calling themselves some variation of The Platters. Last year Reed finally won a court ruling that gave him, as the sole surviving member of the original group, preferential rights to The Platters" name. Herbert Reed was born on August 7 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri, and brought up in poverty. His parents died before he reached his teens and he moved in with relatives, singing in a church choir on Sundays. When he was 15 he hitched a lift to Los Angeles, where he landed a job in a car wash after arriving virtually penniless. To earn extra money, he and some friends sang close harmony songs in the street, and by 1953 were winning amateur singing contests in and around Los Angeles. It was Reed's idea to name the group The Platters because American radio DJs referred to the new vinyl records they played as "platters." In 1955, with 15-year-old Zola Taylor added to the line up, the group had their first big hit, Only You, written by Ram. They worked on the song in every spare moment they had, even when they were driving around in Reed's old car. "We tried it so many times, and it was terrible," Reed remembered. One time we were rehearsing in the car on our way to Buck's and the car jerked. Tony went 'O-oHHHH-nly you. We laughed at first, but when he sang that song - that was the sign we had hit on something. Reed was the only member of the original line-up to use his new-found fortune wisely. Mindful of his impoverished upbringing, and while other members of the group squandered their share, he used his first substantial royalty cheque to buy a house. The Platters" string of hits made Reed a wealthy man, but at the height of the group's success touring conditions were difficult, particularly in the American South, where they had to perform separately for segregated audiences and white thugs often threatened them. Never the less the group established doo-wop as one of America's most popular music genres, not least because, as Reed pointed out "everybody can sing a little doo-wop." The Platters were added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Herb Reed is survived by a son. Herb Reed, born August 7 1928, died June 4 2012