George Baker

Johannes "Hans" Bouwens (born 8 December 1944), known as George Baker, is a Dutch singer and songwriter who, with his band George Baker Selection, scored two international hits in the 1970s, "Paloma Blanca" and "Little Green Bag". Baker also recorded as a solo artist for a number of years. Childhood Bouwens was born near the end of World War II on 8 December 1944 as the son of a single mother on the Gravenstraat in Hoorn, at or near the location where Jan Pieterszoon Coen was born in 1587. Months before Bouwens was born, his father, Peppino Caruso, a former Italian soldier from Calabria put to labor by the Germans in nearby Grosthuizen, had been killed while attempting to escape when he was to be transferred to Germany. Bouwens was raised by his mother and his grandparents, Willemke Woudstra and Johannes Bouwens (1886–1952), first in Hoorn and from 1957 on the Wandelweg in Wormerveer. There, he sang and played guitar in a schoolband (The Jokers) with Bob Ketzer, but at the age of 14 he left school and took jobs unloading ships on the Zaan and eventually as a factory worker at a lemonade factory. In 1961, he took the stage name "Body" and formed the band Body and the Wild Cats, with Bob Ketzer and his brother Ruud as well as Gerrit Bruyn on bass, all from Wormerveer. George Baker Selection In 1968, Bouwens joined the band Soul Invention, a soul band which was founded the previous year by Henk Kramer in Assendelft and played covers of songs by Otis Redding and Sam and Dave. The band consisted of Job Netten (guitar), Henk Kramer and Eric Bardoen (saxophone), Jacques Greuter (keyboard and flute), Theo Vermast and later Jan Visser (bass), and Ton Vredenburg (drums). Visser and Bouwens wrote the song "Little Greenback" in the summer of 1969. The band recorded their first album in September 1969, after which, considering this was no soul music, they changed their name to The George Baker Selection, Bouwens naming himself for a character from a detective novel. This first album, Little Green Bag (1970), produced an immediate worldwide hit: their debut single, "Little Green Bag," reached No. 16 on the Cash Box magazine chart and No. 21 on the Billboard Top 100 in the United States. The success came as a surprise for Baker, who remembers hearing it on the radio while he was working in a lemonade factory. The single sold over one million copies globally, and received a gold disc.