The Legendary Sauter-Finegan Orchestra - A Music Lover's Dream

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“To the history of recorded sound, the orchestra led by Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan has made one of the most remarkable contributions. Not only have Eddie and Bill added considerably to the size and instrumentation of the traditional jazz orchestra; they have heightened color, produced new sounds, and evoked moods heretofore unconsidered in the usual pop music set-up.

The new music they have created is not strictly limited to records. Although the idea of the band was born in the minds of Eddie and Bill some years ago, and was carefully nurtured in the RCA Victor recording studios, the music they produce is not "gimmicked." nor is it sound-for sound's-sake. At this writing (Summer, 1953), the band is enjoying a highly successful run through the middle west where these same distinctive sounds are being eagerly applauded by an enthusiastic public.

Long known among the musical cognoscenti as top-drawer arrangers for Benny Goodman, Ray McKinley, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. among others, Eddie and Bill had definite ideas from the outset about their eventual goal. "The music of our new band." they said, 'can best be summed up in two words - “COLOR and MOOD." But they also stated that "we are not starting out with any preconceived notion of style," and what the band has already cut on records, and is now performing in public, is the result of a steady progression of ideas based on the way we wanted the band to sound, and on the things they were most eager to say.”

To obtain this color and mood, Sauter and Finegan immediately planned to augment the usual instrumentation of the jazz orchestra. They considered its scope too limited in the combination of brass, reeds and rhythm, and they proceeded to add, first, an enormously expanded percussion section including tympani, triangle, chimes, celeste and xylophone. As the need

arose, they also added such "ten-cent store" items as recorders, kazoos and toy trumpets - not to mention just about everything that could be beaten or struck - anything, in fact, that would contribute to the sound for which they were striving.”

- Liner Notes to The Sound of the SAUTER-FINEGAN ORCHESTRA [RCA LPM 1009 1954]

“Our band was born in April, 1952, and there arises an insatiable curiosity about our arrangements, the instruments we use, and the varied talents of the people with whom we work.

The object of this album, aside from musical entertainment, is largely to provide some answers to that curiosity.

Well, as for the arrangements, one of our first considerations was shape. To define shape is a difficult thing. It is a composite of thickness and thinness of texture and sound. Rhythmic punctuation, tension and relaxation, the placement of climaxes. and generally, the organization of all the obvious and abstract elements that add up to a piece of music. It seems involved, but is in reality quite simple.

Now, we didn't set out to create new sounds as such. We did want more elbow room, the freedom to move up or down in pitch as far as we wanted to go (within the range of human audibility of course) and in order to make clear the inner texture of the music - to provide a never-ending source of changing moods we had to have a variety of instrumental colours.

To attain this there had to be a woodwind section of multiple doubles ranging from the standard saxophones to piccolos, flutes, oboe, English horn, clarinets, fifes and recorders. We added a full percussion section as a means to pointing up accents. A brass section of three trumpets, three trombones and a tuba. The rhythm is the usual guitar, bass and drums, with the pianist doubling on glockenspiel and celeste. Last, but not least, is a harp.

Considering what we wanted to do, we had to have such musicians who would have a special sensitivity towards music as well as being technically proficient on their instruments.

Our records until now have emphasized the ensemble - the fusing of personalities to make an idea or a feeling come alive. A submersion of the individual to the group. We know our people, and we try to tailor the parts they play to fit their particular natures so that even in the ensemble their identities are apparent.

This album will be an attempt to really isolate some of the special facets of personality, of interpretive and creative ability, without which the whole could not be.”

- Liner notes to Inside Sauter Finegan [RCA LJM 1003 1954]

 “The legendary Sauter-Finegan Orchestra was a music lover's dream come true. Co-led by two of the most imaginative and capable arranging talents to emerge from the swing era, and brimful with instrumental giants, this outfit staked out a singular oasis of brilliance in the pop world of the early 1950s. Arranger Billy May has described their records as "unbelievably good," a compliment which in this case almost borders on stinting praise. The wit, sophistication, and sublime musicianship that exude from their best efforts represent nothing less than a lofty artistic summit in the recorded legacy of the big bands. Of course, the heyday of the band era was already a fast-receding memory when this group first appeared on the scene in 1952, but they nonetheless found a respectable measure of commercial success, in addition to rapturous critical acclaim, and their brief five year history as an active ensemble remains an endearing case study in just how wonderful and exciting popular music can be.

Eddie Sauter was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 2,1914, and gained his first notoriety as an arranger in the mid-1930s turning out charts for the Red Norvo band and its featured vocalist, Mildred Bailey. By decade's end he had joined Benny Goodman, and such driving Sauter originals as Benny Rides Again and Clarinet A La King helped to keep the Goodman band a national favorite well into the 1940s. "I still think those things he did for Benny are classics," confided Bill Finegan during a recent interview. "I was always a great fan of Eddie's writing." Finegan, who was born in Newark, New Jersey, on April 3, 1917, had gotten his own precocious start in the business fresh out of high school, when he submitted an arrangement of The Lonesome Road to Tommy Dorsey. The bandleader was favorably impressed, and shared news of his find with a relative unknown named Glenn Miller, who promptly called with a job offer. Beginning in late 1938, Finegan became arguably the most inspired arranger to work for the Miller band in its glory days, penning such classics as Little Brown Jug and on unforgettable treatment of Song Of The Volga Boatmen.

After World War II, Finegan took advantage of the Gl Bill to travel overseas and further his musical studies in Paris. He corresponded regularly with his friend Eddie Sauter, who one day sent along a letter written on the back of a rejection notice he'd received for one of his arrangements from a leader both men considered to be a mediocre musician. “This was an outrage," recalls Finegan. "Almost as a joke, I wrote back that things were getting so bad, maybe we should just start our own band and write for ourselves. We'd both had our fill of autocratic bandleaders. Eddie was enthusiastic about the idea, and things just grew from there." When Finegan returned stateside, he and Sauter had a meeting with Dave Kapp, an executive and A & R man at RCA. At this early stage, they hadn't yet decided upon the direction they wanted to take. 'Dave Kapp said, 'I just want to buy Sauter and Finegan," remembers Bill. "'I know your work, and I'm sure that whatever you do will be interesting.' We wanted to record strictly our own original material, but Dave felt that we were 'springing something new at the public' and could use the help of more familiar tunes to get started. We trusted his judgement, and ended up recording a mixture of our own things and titles that he suggested."

Dave Kapp and booking agent Willard Alexander, who was retained to represent this new aggregation, held an old-fashioned view of the band business that clashed with some of Sauter and Finegan's weightier aspirations. "We had visions of eventually doing concerts, but I wanted to keep the band in the studio until we'd at least had a few hits," explains Finegan. "I got talked out of it.' On the heels of their initial success, a charming recording entitled Doodletown Fifers that became both their theme song and a #12 hit in August of 1952, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra made its public debut, to rave reviews, at the Meadowbrook ballroom in New Jersey that September. They brought onto the bandstand a device designed by Eddie Sauter's brother, an accomplished electrical engineer, that served them remarkably well. It was a sound system consisting of strategically placed microphones, which either leader could manipulate from a control panel, designed to enhance the contributions of such delicate elements as muted trumpets, bringing them up to the level of the rest of the band. A speaker was placed on either side of the stage to channel the results. "It was essentially an early stereo sound system for ihe band,'' recalls Finegan, and it enabled them to replicate in person the gorgeous textures and melodic subtleties of their studio performances.

"We were basically uncompromising about the music," explains Finegan, "with a few exceptions, such as the use of the rhythm section. Willard Alexander wanted a 'danceable band.' We wanted to play concerts, but he didn't feel there were enough of those venues to sustain the band, so when we hit the road we played ballrooms, even though they were dying out at that point. It was difficult, because we had demanding charts that needed very good players, so our payroll was greater than the average band's." 

Among the numerous first class musicians employed were Al Klink on saxophone, Ralph Burns on piano, trombonist Kai Winding, and guitarist Mundell Lowe. Both leaders were too busy writing for the band to make many instrumental contributions of their own, although Sauter was known to pitch in on the toy trumpet, and Finegan later joked that his most effective solo consisted of the chest thumping sounds he provided for the band's atmospheric rendition of Midnight Sleighride, an adaptation of Prokofiev that was a #29 hit in 1953. Serious but never pompous about their music, the arrangers playfully added the likes of kazoos, ratchets, and glockenspiels to their palette, occasionally employing such a wide variety of bell sounds that Finegon fell the results were sometimes reminiscent of "a Balinese orchestra."

When Dave Kapp began suggesting material that required vocal contributions, the band took on a contingent of fine singers, including a vocal group dubbed "The Doodlers." The lovely soprano of Sally Sweetland helped make the band's recording of the title song from the film The Moon Is Blue a #20 hit in 1953. Their most memorable vocal talent was the great Joe Mooney, a blind singer-organist often described as a "musician's musician," who was particularly wonderful on their 1952 recording of Nina Never Knew, a moody masterpiece which became a #13 hit. At its core, however, this ensemble was intended to be a showcase for instrumental prowess and creative arranging, both of which are present in abundance on Child's Play and Horseplay, two lengthy pieces written by Finegan and Sauter, respectively, as part of a four movement composition entitled The Extended Play Suite that was created at RCA's behest in an attempt to promote the fledgling EP record format. Humor was another Sauler-Finegan trademark, usually manifesting itself in the mischievous use of sound, but sometimes surfacing as riotous parody. Listen to the wicked unison band vocal which opens their 1956 performance of Sauler's arrangement of Got A Date With An Angel, and you'll never again be able to sit through the famous introduction of the original 1934 Hal Kemp recording without bursting into laughter. Bill Finegan particularly enjoyed tinkering with the classics, as well as public domain material. The 1953 rendition of Now That I'm In Love, for example, with its disarming if somewhat breathless vocal by Anita Boyer, is a clever reworking of Rossini's William Tell Overture. The band also revisited its initial success with Doodletown Fifers on such later selections as Yankee Doodletown and a revival of Uptown Racers entitled Doodletown Racers. The original Doodletown opus was an adaptation of a Civil War era melody that got its name when the bandleaders glimpsed a road sign pointing to "Doodletown" while driving in the countryside near Nyack, New York.

Regrettably, the harsh realities of economics, exacerbated by the advent of rock and roll, brought the glorious experiment that was the Sauter-Finegan  Orchestra to a halt in 1957. Eddie Sauter busied himself with film and television work until his death from a heart attack in 1981.

Bill Finegan turned to academic, and for a time taught jazz studies at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. In 1986, he led a well-received Sauter-Finegan reunion concert at New York's Town Hall. "The guys in ihe band still keep in touch and occasionally get together," he explained recently, and it's very moving for me to see the affection they have for the band and for each other. Every night was like a party with that band, but they all shaped up on the bandstand. Our discipline came from the music itself.

We were all dedicated to turning in the best performance we possibly could.” This camaraderie and devotion to craft that shine through on every selection in this anthology placed the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra in a class by itself, and even after more than forty [53 as of this posting] years, their finest recordings continue to astonish and delight.”

Joseph Laredo - The Best of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra [Collector’s Choice CCM-078-2]

Fortunately, many of the classic Sauter Finegan RCA LPs from the 1950s have been reissued as double Avid CDs - Sauter Finegan Four Classic Albums [AMSC 1212 and Second Set EMSC 1246]. There is also a single disc Collector’s Choice The Best of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra [CCM 0-78-2].