George Baker Selection was a pop-rock band from Assendelft, the Netherlands. The band is best-known for the 1969 song "Little Green Bag" and the 1975 world-wide hit "Paloma Blanca". In 1968, Hans Bouwens from Wormerveer joined the band "Soul Invention", a soul band that had been 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" (sic) in the summer of 1969. The band recorded their first album in September 1969, after which, considering this was not 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. A string of singles and albums followed; the second single, "Dear Ann," was such a success that Baker resigned from his job in the lemonade factory and became a full-time musician. Not all band members followed suit and, besides Bouwens, the "Selection" from mid 1970 was formed by Jan Visser, Jan Hop (drums), Jacques Greuter and George Thé (voice, guitar, bass). In March 1971 Jan Visser left the band to be replaced by Cor Veerman. Besides scoring hits with his own Selection, Baker also wrote songs for others, including BZN, The Shoes, Andy Star, and Next One. In 1974, singer Lida Bond joined the Selection, and combining her voice with Baker's proved highly successful. More information...
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