Allen Eager
American musician (1927–2003)
Allen Eager (January 10, 1927 – April 13, 2003) was an American jazz tenor and alto saxophonist who also competed in auto racing and took part in LSD experiments.
Early life
Allen Eager was born in New York City on January 10, 1927. He grew up in the Bronx. According to Denise McCluggage, Eager could read aged 3, and learned to drive at the age of 9 with the help of his mother, after she caught him driving a garbage truck near the hotels that his parents owned in the Catskill Mountains. He took clarinet lessons with David Weber of the New York Philharmonic at the age of 13.
Early career in jazz
Eager briefly played with Woody Herman at the age of 15. At the same age, he took heroin for the first time. Aged 16, he played in the band of Bobby Sherwood, then went on to play with Sonny Dunham, Shorty Sherock, and Hal McIntyre. Eager was then with Herman again in 1943–44, Tommy Dorsey, and Johnny Bothwell in 1945. After World War II he became a regular on the scene around 52nd Street in New York; he led his own ensemble there from 1945 to 1947.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american musician (1927–2003). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2648344. VIAF identifies the subject as 59269338. The Library of Congress control number is n92048614. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2003, 1943 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Allen Eager” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.