George Baker (Dutch singer)
Dutch singer-songwriter
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 three international hits: "Little Green Bag" (1969), "Paloma Blanca" (1975) and "Santa Lucia by Night" (1985).
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 school band (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 Green Bag" 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.
The public source identifies “George Baker (Dutch singer)” as dutch singer-songwriter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around George, Baker and Dutch.
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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 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2290781. VIAF identifies the subject as 76740470. The Library of Congress control number is no2005045562. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1969, 1975 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Baker (Dutch singer)” 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.