Max van Gelder (12 February 1916 – 2 October 2004), professionally known as Max Geldray, was a Dutch jazz harmonica player. Best known for providing musical interludes for the BBC radio comedy programme 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 the United Kingdom, 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 from 1951 until the end of the show's run in 1960, providing one of the musical interludes and the closing music for each programme, as well as sometimes taking brief speaking roles. After The Goon Show series ended, Geldray settled in the US, where he worked as an entertainer in the Reno casinos alongside performers such as 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 had one son. Geldray died in October 2004, aged 88. Early life (1916–46) 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 Geldray and his Mouth Accordion Band", changing the surname