"Jazz a la Sauter: Eddie Sauter" on Night Lights

[ghost of miles]

This week's Night Lights show pays a centennial-year tribute to arranger Eddie Sauter and his work with Red Norvo, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Ray McKinley, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, and Stan Getz.  You can listen to the program online here:

Jazz a la Sauter: Eddie Sauter

Next week:  "Crossing The Bridge: The Return Of Sonny Rollins."

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

We re-aired Jazz a la Sauter: Eddie Sauter this past week, and it remains archived for online listening.

[sgcim]

Great show as usual!   Thank God he was able to get away from the overly busy Goodman, and write music without BG barging into every second of his arrangements.

There wasn't much room left for him with the Mildred Bailey stuff either. Getz made up for his bad side by letting Eddie write what he wanted on Focus and Mickey-One, one of my fave films of all time. 

[jazzcorner]

Eddie Sauter was the responsible band leader for the former german radio station SWF (Südwest Funk) Baden-Baden for some years after Kurt Edelhagen had left the station to mgo to tthe WDR. The SWF station was later merged with radio Stuttgart (Süddeutscher Rundfunk).The new station is SWR.

 

[ghost of miles]

49 minutes ago, jazzcorner said:

Eddie Sauter was the responsible band leader for the former german radio station SWF (Südwest Funk) Baden-Baden for some years after Kurt Edelhagen had left the station to mgo to tthe WDR. The SWF station was later merged with radio Stuttgart (Süddeutscher Rundfunk).The new station is SWR.

 

Hey JC, yes, I briefly mention this in the show and include a 1957 SWF band recording of his composition  "Tropic of Kommingen," 

[ghost of miles]

We recently re-aired Jazz a la Sauter, and it remains archived for online listening. I wasn't aware of this when I scheduled the broadcast, but Loren Schoenberg has released a new CD of previously unrecorded Sauter charts written for the Red Norvo-Mildred Bailey band:

So Many Memories

[Stompin at the Savoy]

Interesting program.  I've been curious and don't know much about about him.

 

[Big Beat Steve]

14 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

We recently re-aired Jazz a la Sauter, and it remains archived for online listening. I wasn't aware of this when I scheduled the broadcast, but Loren Schoenberg has released a new CD of previously unrecorded Sauter charts written for the Red Norvo-Mildred Bailey band:

So Many Memories

I had missed this radio show the earlier times round, so it is a nice reminder. Just one detail about the script about your show that's accessible under your link: Eddie Sauter made much more of a splash here on the German jazz scene than is apparent from your rather short mention of his activities in Germany. And he really added a asting page of history to late 50s jazz here. As for the reasons hinted at why his stay with that radio big band ended, it is certainly much less "problematic" than your text sounds. It all boiled down to the permanent problem that no big band in those settings could survive at that time on an all-out jazz repertoire, so a percentage of more commercial "dance band tunes" had to be accommodated. And this contrast probably grated Eddie Sauter more in the long run than it would have certain other band leaders. But it wasn't really a question of the perception of the quality of Sauter's work as such by the deciders. 
Recommended listening for everyone: the 2-LP set "Eddie Sauter in Germany" on Big Band International 2706.

BTW, admittedly I have not looked in detail at the texts accompanying your shows past and present for some time, but I see now that you no longer have a setlist of the tunes broadcast during a show (so that the readers can check beforehand what they will be listening to). Pity, because these setlists came in handy  ...

Edited 4 hours ago by Big Beat Steve

[Stompin at the Savoy]

Some of Sauter's work is swinging, such as the Goodman stuff.  But it seems when he is given free rein he goes toward a kind of neo-classical orchestral style of writing which strays pretty far from the jazz tradition.  I guess I'm an old fogey but I like a fair amount of toe tapping kind of thing in the music I listen to.  I am going to give Sauter some more chances.  My first impression is maybe not my cup of tea...

[Big Beat Steve]

You aren't wrong. Writeups from German jazz sources mentioned him as a sort of pioneer of "third stream" in jazz (which was a big thing over here in the 50s and 60s - obviously there were many who did not dare to stray too far from good old classical music into outright "toe-tapping" jazz and felt more comfortable when they still had their aural reference points reminding them of classical music ).
The third stream as heard elsewhere is not that evident to me all in all with the Sauter recordings (and the "Eddie Sauter in Germany" LP I mentioned certainly is not as far out as the concert piece from the Donaueschingen festival that Ghost of Miles speaks of in his text for his Night Lights show, but then Donaueschingen always was a meeting place for the "weirdos in jazz" ). But a certain tendency is there, and I also am among those who need to be in the mood to really dig the Eddie Sauter scores. FWIW, just before Christmas I bought an original copy of the Sauter-Finegan's "Return of the Doodletown Fifers" on United Artists, and my first listening impression was that I need to revisit the record later when I am more in the mood for this. (Which often does happen, as I do enjoy my doses of Kentons, Raeburns and Thornhills too.  File under "another chapter in progressive jazz", then! )

Edited 40 minutes ago by Big Beat Steve