Dutch jazz composer and arranger Jerry van Rooyen (birth name Jerry van Rooijen) died on September 14th. He was 80 years old.
Van Rooyen was born on December 31st, 1928 in the Hague, the Netherlands. Jerry took his first music lessons at age eight and immediately joined a brass band in his hometown as a trumpet player.
Van Rooyen studied for several years with the lead trumpet player of the Netherlands Symphonic Orchestra and further studied music at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he eventually graduated as a music teacher. In 1944 Van Rooyen joined a Dutch revue show as first trumpet player. He toured Indonesia, America and Scandinavia with such famous Dutch and Scandinavian musicians as Ernst Van’t Hoff, Boyd Bachman, Bengt Hallberg, Ake Persson and Lars Gullin. In 1955 Jerry signed on as first trumpet player and arranger for the Dutch radio orchestra the Ramblers and performed with his own jazz combo in numerous Amsterdam nightclubs. Van Rooyen went to Paris, France in 1959, where he was a conductor and arranger for Fantana Records and worked with such artists as Michel Legrand, Claude Bolling and Gilbert Becaud.
In 1965 Jerry moved to Berlin, Germany and became the arranger for the S.F.B. Dance Orchestra. Van Rooyen composed the wonderfully groovy and offbeat experimental jazz scores for the Jess Franco pictures “Succubus,” “Red Lips,” and “Kiss Me, Monster.” Moreover, he also supplied the funky music for the films “The Vampire Happening,” “Castle of the Creeping Flesh,” “Death on a Rainy Day,” and “How Short is the Time for Love.” His marvelously hip composition “The Great Train Robbery” was used as the opening credits theme for the hilarious cult indie comedy “Free Enterprise.”
Van Rooyen wrote the opening theme of the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He then returned to the Netherlands, where he worked as both a producer and program director for the AVRO radio station as well as continued producing and arranging for various jazz orchestras all over the world. In 1985 Van Rooyen became the director of the WDR Radio Big Band and toured all over Asia. Jerry van Rooyen’s brother Ack Van Rooyen is a renowned trumpet and flugelhorn player.
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