Ray Ellington (1916-1985)
and The Ray Ellington Quartet
Born Ray Brown in London, the son of an American comedian and a Russian Orthodox Jew, Ray took up a career in music and took his stage name in tribute to his hero, Duke Ellington. Ray was the drummer and lead singer for the Ray Ellington Quartet, who became one of Britain’s most successful acts of the immediate post-war period, voted Melody Maker’s top small band for two years running. The band was a feature of the Goon Show all the way through its run, filling one musical interlude per show, with Ellington singing a wide variety of popular and modern songs. He was also regularly called on as an actor. His regular roles included Bloodnok’s mortal enemy ‘The Red Bladder’, a fierce Arab chieftain. His presence was also used to make (generally non-offensive) jokes about skin colour.
Members of the backroom staff remember him as having a strong stage presence as he was into bodybuilding (he’d been a physical training instructor in wartime), but ‘always reeking of some strange perfume’.
Ray Ellington on Wikipedia
Max Geldray (1916-2004)
Max was a Dutch-born jazz musician who took inspiration from his hero, Louis Armstrong. He was thought to be the first jazz musician to play his chosen instrument, the harmonica. After wartime service, where he barely survived blast injuries, he settled in London. He played a musical interlude throughout the run of the Goon Show and usually played the music to end the show too. Max was nicknamed “Conks” by the Goons because of his big nose, and was teased for being a bad actor on those occasions when he was given a short speaking part.
After the Goon Show, Max took his career to the USA. He continued to be a good friend of Peter Sellers and wrote an autobiography titled ‘Goon With the Wind’.
Max Geldray on Wikipedia
Stanley Black, OBE (1913-2002)
Pianist, conductor, and composer. He conducted the BBC Dance Orchestra 1944-1953, the orchestra for the first two series of The Goon Show. He also wrote “Goon’s Gallop”, the Show’s signature tune for the first six series. He also wrote lots of incidental music for other radio and television shows and several film scores, and continued to conduct broadcasts and concerts well into the 1990s. His signature tune was “That Old Black Magic”.
Stanley Black on Wikipedia
Walter ‘Wally’ Stott (Angela Morley since 1973) (1924-2009)
Wally Stott was the conductor and composer of theme and incidental music for several BBC radio programmes. When Stanley Black’s BBC Dance Orchestra left the Goon Show at the end of the second series due to prior commitments, Wally Stott took over, conducting an orchestra of hand-picked session musicians for the remainder of the show’s run. With the Goon Show, he was able to take flights of fancy not permissible in most radio programmes. His ‘movie-quality’ music links, interludes, and signature tunes were a vital part of the programme.
Wally has had a sex-change operation in 1972 and took the name Angela Morley. As a film score composer, Angela received Oscar nominations for The Slipper and the Rose (1974) and The Little Prince. She latterly lived and worked in America.
Angela Morley interview
Angela Morley on Wikipedia
The Goon Show Preservation Society 