Max Geldray

Max van Gelder (12 February 1916 – 2 October 2004), professionally known as Max Geldray, was a jazz harmonica player. Best known for providing the musical interludes for The Goon Show, he was also credited as being the first harmonica player to embrace the jazz style.

Geldray was born in the Netherlands and played jazz in England, Belgium, France and his home country, before settling in Britain at the outbreak of the Second World War; he was wounded during the Invasion of Normandy. He appeared in nearly every episode of The Goon Show, providing one of the musical interludes and the closing music for each programme. After The Goon Show series finished in 1960, he settled in the US, where he worked as an entertainer in the Reno casinos alongside the likes of Sarah Vaughan and Billy Daniels. Moving to Palm Springs, he eventually became a part-time counsellor at the Betty Ford Center. He was married twice and has one son. Geldray died in 2004 at the age of 88.

Geldray was born Max Leon van Gelder, on 12 February 1916 in Amsterdam, Netherlands to Jewish parents. His father, Leon van Gelder, was a commercial traveller, and his mother was Margarite, née Baillosterky. By 1922 Leon was the European Manager for Maja perfume and the family moved out of Amsterdam to Bilthoven. Both parents could play the piano—Leon was self-taught and played by ear, while Margarite was classically trained—and it was Leon who started to teach Geldray how to play. He developed love of jazz music after hearing Louis Armstrong on the radio in 1928; Geldray later wrote "how could anyone not love its energy, its vitality and the freedom of its form? And Louis Armstrong among all the players, became something special to me".

In February 1930 Geldray heard a mouth organ player on BBC Radio and mentioned the performance to a friend, Hans Mossel, owner of a music shop in Amsterdam; Mossel had ordered a chromatic harmonica the previous week and gave it to Geldray, who practised assiduously. By 1934 Geldray had made some appearances on Dutch radio and formed a band with eight others; an agent named Franklin billed the group as "Mac [sic] Geldray and his Mouth Accordion Band", changing the surname of the principal to the name he retained for the rest of his life. With his performances, Geldray became the first person to play the harmonica in the jazz style. A change in the format of the band to a quartet and the introduction of a new manager led to a six-week tour of English theatres in 1937, accompanying the comedian Tom Moss; the band changed its name to "The Hollander Boys". During the tour Moss introduced Geldray to Jack Hylton, who invited him to play in his orchestra for the evening.

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