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Newstalgia Downbeat - The Sauter-Finegan Aggregation - 1953

Newstalgia Downbeat with The Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, live at The Blue Note Club in Chicago - August 12, 1953.

Sauter-Finegan. Trying something new with something old.


A few months ago I ran another Sauter-Finegan Club date, also from Chicago and also from 1953. This one is earlier by a month and wasn't part of the All-Star Parade of Bands series put on by The Treasury Department. This was part of a weekly show broadcast from the famous Blue Note Club in Chicago and was first broadcast on August 12, 1953.

Different song lineup, with the exception of the Band's Theme (Doodletown Fifers), and there's a few technical goofs in this broadcast (the engineer couldn't find the right vocal microphone for the first number), but it settles down by the second number and the audience is pretty happy.

So if you're wondering about the Big Band scene in the early 1950's, Sauter-Finegan was one of the bands to watch at the time. However, as it worked out, the climate was changing fast and the writing was on the wall for Big Bands in favor of small outfits, as was evidenced by the announcer giving news for the upcoming broadcast the following week with Art Tatum's Trio. There would be a lot more Trios and Quartets in the future - it was just the economic nature of the beast.

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