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Allen Eager was born on January 10, 1927 in New York City and grew up in the Bronx. Reading by age 3, he learned to drive at the age of 9 with the help of his mother, after catching him driving a garbage truck near their hotels in the Catskill Mountains. He took clarinet lessons with David Weber of the New York Philharmonic at the age of 13 and went on to make the tenor saxophone his instrument.
When he was 15 Eager briefly played with Woody Herman and also took heroin for the first time. The next year he played in the Bobby Sherwood band, then went on to play with Sonny Dunham, Shorty Sherock, Hal McIntyre, Tommy Dorsey and John Bothwell all by 1945. After World War II he became a regular on the 52nd Street scene in New York, led his own ensemble there from 1945–47 and recorded his debut as leader for Savoy Records in 1946 with pianist Ed Finckel, bassist Bob Carter and drummer Max Roach.
Influenced by the playing of Lester Young, he was in good company with his contemporaries Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, Al Cohn and others. He adopted the musical forms pioneered in bebop but also adopted the drug dependency of a lot of the bebop players in the 1940s. As a white saxophonist of the time, Eager was a member of several bands led by black musicians including Coleman Hawkins, Fats Navarro, Charlie Parker, Red Rodney and Tadd Dameron by 1950.
During the Fifties he played with Gerry Mulligan, Terry Gibbs, Buddy Rich and Howard McGhee. He lived and performed in Paris from 1956-1957, returned to the States and recorded his last session for the next 25 years, The Gerry Mulligan Songbook with Mulligan leading. He essentially retired from jazz and while dealing with his own drug addiction did appear in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 book The Subterraneans as the character Roger Beloit. Allen went on to pursue other activities such as skiing, auto racing, and LSD experimentation with Timothy Leary. After several notable racing finishes at Sebring and Europe in 1963 a crash left him with broken bones.
He occasionally dabbled in music again, playing alto saxophone with Charles Mingus, Frank Zappa, recorded a 1982 Uptown Records session titled Renaissance. He toured with Dizzy Gillespie and Chet Baker and played in England. Tenor and alto saxophonist Allen Eager passed away from liver cancer on April 13, 2003 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
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