Dutch jaz: Boy Edgar
Boy Edgar is the alias George Willem Fred Edgar adopted (Amsterdam, 31 March 1915 – Amsterdam, 8 April 1980). He was a successful Dutch jazz conductor, pianist and trumpet player.
He was also active in the resistance during WWII, saving Jewish children, and obtained a doctorate on multiple sclerosis after the war. Boy Edgar has been a huge influence on Dutch jazz but led a double life in a way; he had a hard time choosing between his medical and musical career – and perhaps didn’t want to choose at all.
He made several LPs during the sixties, won the Dutch Edison Award and performed regularly with international stars on radio and television. In the mid-sixties, he was at the height of his artistic career; Boy’s Big Band recorded the LPs Now’s the time (1965) and Finch Eye (1966). After having worked as a physician in the USA for some years, he became a GP in Amsterdam. In the end, he couldn’t combine being a doctor with the jazz and his Big Band stopped in 1971.
During the seventies, he conducted the Boy’s Sound. Shortly before he passed away, at the end of 1979, he stopped working as a GP. The Wessel Ilcken Award, the most prestigious award of the Dutch jazz scene, was renamed as the Boy Edgarprijs, in honour of his musical career. He had won the award himself in 1964.
Numbers
- Blue Boy Boy’s Big Band
- Yesterdays Boy’s Big band
- I Remember Vienna Boy’s Big Band
- Plain Blues Boy’s Big Band
- I May Be Wrong Boy Edgar Sound
- Body And Soul Boy Edgar Sound
- Be There Boy Edgar Sound
- In My Solitude Boy Edgar Sound
- Ready Go Boy Edgar Sound
