If you asked an East German back in the 1970s who the most famous American in the world was, they wouldn’t have said Elvis or JFK. They would have said Dean Reed.

It was a strange journey for Reed. He had an idyllic childhood, riding horses on a Colorado farm and playing guitar in local restaurants to pay his way through meteorology school. But before he could become Denver’s next weatherman, he went to Hollywood to study acting.

There, less for his musical talent than his good looks, Reed caught Capitol Records’ interest. He didn’t quite catch on as the teen pop idol he was groomed to become in the United States, but his 1961 single “Our Summer Romance” became a hit in South America. After touring and living in Chile, Reed encountered poverty and inequity that made him sympathetic to socialist ideas emerging in the region at the time.