New Directions In Music - Sauter - Finegan

Moonlight On The Ganges

RCA Victor Presents New Directions In Music
The Sauter - Finegan Orchestra
RCA Victor LPM 3115
10 inch LP
1952

From the back cover: Not so long ago Hollywood's favorite axiom was: "The mental age of the average movie-goer is twelve years." At about the same time the popular music business was offering the same public works of musical genius like "Three Little Fishes" and "The Music Goes Round." Apparently Tin Pan Alley's estimate of its clientele's mental prowess was no different than Hollywood's.

Fortunately, the past ten or fifteen years have seen the beginning of a move toward maturity in both Hollywood and New York. In the film industry the names that stand out as sponsors of better things are Kramer, Stevens, Mankiewicz, Huston and a few more. In the music business Sauter and Finegan are two of the chief proponents of a new direction for popular music.

Long before the eight arrangements gathered here were recorded, Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan were individually gaining yardage in the scrimmage with banality. Sauter scored his first advance in the music game when he switched from the trumpeter's chair to the arranger's desk in the Red Norvo band in 1937. Almost from the beginning the conservative element in the business began to whisper that "Sauter just ain't commercial." The whisper grew to a battle cray when he went from Norvo to Goodman, to Artie Shaw, to Woody Herman. By 1946, when he began to write for the controversial Ray McKinley band, the resistance to his ideas grew to such a pitch that when he fell ill a few years later there were some who claimed his critics were responsible.

While Sauter was thus engaged Bill Finegan was achieving a similar measure of success. In 1938 Bill met Glenn Miller, who was forming his band. Finegan became Miller's chief arranger, and remained so throughout the entire civilian career of the Miller band – four years. Many experts are of the opinion that it was Bill Finegan who was largely responsible for not only the general popularity of Miller's music, but also for the favor that Miller found among the most discriminating followers of popular music. When Glenn joined the Army in 1942 Bill went to work for Tommy Dorsey and, for the next ten years, produced arrangements that increased the reputation of both Dorsey and Finegan.

Bill and Eddie met in 1939. When they finally got together in 1952 there were some serious doubts about their chances for success. Even their closest friends and supporters were aware that music might prove uncommercial. When first Doodletown Fifers, then Moonlight On The Ganges hit, everybody, and especially Bill and Eddie, breathed a proverbial sigh. The typical music business reaction to the Sauter-Finegan direction in popular music is summed up in the words of the music editor of one of the country's leading slick magazines. The editor, a man accustomed to evaluating the most erudite forms of music, listened to Midnight Sleighride and asked, "Shouldn't this be on the Red Seal label? What I mean is, is the average record buyer willing to sit down and give this music the attention it deserves?"

Which seems to indicate that the average buyer, the man who goes to the movies and buys popular records, has a mind that is somewhat more mature than the twelve-year old mentality he was once believed to posses.

Doodletown Fifers
April In Paris
Midnight Sleighride
Rain
Azure-Te
Stop! Sit Down! Relax! Think!
Moonlight On The Ganges
When Heart Are Young