I started picking up their albums years ago. I can’t remember if the Jim Flora cover art first brought them to my attention, or the fact that they were on some compilations.
Anyway, I have about 8 albums by them, mostly on RCA, but also 2 later ones on United Artists. It seems to me that they were – in a sense – RCA’s answer to Stan Kenton on Capitol and Pete Rugolo on Columbia (and later Mercury).
What’s interesting about the albums that I’ve heard is they veer from incredibly modern, experimental, space age writing and arranging, to some really corny stuff that I never want to hear again. Like everyone else, they had to pay the bills, so I’m guessing some of the latter were intended to be novelty or commercial efforts. What I’m not clear on, though, is how many of those early RCA albums were intended as albums or simply compiled from singles. Assuming the latter, that would at least explain why those albums vary so much in quality of content.
I know that Eddie Sauter later went on to work with Stan Getz on both “Mickey One” and “Focus,” but I’m not sure what else Sauter and Finegan did after this orchestra. Also, was this strictly a studio project or did they do live performances?