Arthur Fields

Arthur Fields around 1919

Arthur Fields (born August 6, 1888 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † March 29, 1953 in Largo , Florida ; actually Abe Finkelstein ) was an American jazz and later country musician and songwriter . Fields left a large number of recordings between 1914 and 1932 and worked with Fred Hall as a country musician from 1929 .

Life

Arthur Fields signs an autograph on the step of his car

Childhood and youth

Fields was born in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania in 1888 . Fields grew up in Utica , New York State , and began singing in the church choir as a child. Fields was a professional singer at the age of eleven. In 1899 he sang during a film screening and joined the Guy Brothers' Minstrel Show around 1908 , where he met Harry Carroll. Together with Carroll and Eddie Weston he founded the vaudeville trio Weston, Fields & Carroll that ran the Keith Vaudeville Circuit for years until Weston's death .

Career

Beginnings as a songwriter

Fields also began writing his first songs with Harry Carroll. In contrast to most other composers of his time, Fields concentrated not only on writing the text or on composing the music, but combined both in his work. With Carroll he wrote a large number of titles in these early years, including On The Mississippi , published in 1912 . This track became Field's first success and turned out to be a hit with popular singers at the time including Billy Murray , the American Quartet, and Collins & Harlan . Fields had a knack for piece writing because he knew what the audience wanted to hear. His composition Aba Daba Honeymoon was again a success in 1924 and 1950 when it was used as film music.

Rise as a singer

Hunting The Hun , 1918

In 1914, however, it became apparent that Fields was more interested in making records than writing songs for other singers. In the same year Fields recorded his first record Along Came Ruth (Victor 17637). The ballad was written by Field's friend Irving Berlin and recorded on September 2 and released in November. On September 19, Fields recorded another version for Columbia Records and also played one for the smaller Little Wonder label. In the next few years he sang mainly pieces that Irving Berlin had composed, but also recorded some self-written titles. Many of these self-written songs were patriotic war songs that reflected the view of the time. When the USA began to interfere more strongly in the European conflict from 1917, songs like Let's Bury The Hatchet (In The Kaiser's Head) and Hunting The Hun were released by Columbia . These records were so successful that Columbia kept them in their catalog for a few years after the end of World War I.

In 1915 Fields also recorded a song for the Pan-American Exhibition , which he called San Francisco (Columbia A1699). Between 1915 and 1919 Fields rose to become a prominent and successful singer. He was under contract for Victor Records , Pathé Records , Edison Records , Emerson Records and Columbia , among others , and Fields was active for the latter record company between 1914 and 1919 and was considered one of their most lucrative singers of those years.

Fields also used pseudonyms for some of his publications . Pathé used the name “Roy Randal” for It's Not Your Nationality (Pathé 20103) and Columbia published numerous Fields records as “Eugene Buckley” (first published in July 1918). In the same year Fields became one of the first artists to release records on the Aeolian Company's newly founded label Vocalion Records . A Vocalion catalog from 1918 wrote about Fields 'new releases : " Those who have enjoyed Arthur Fields' agreeable voice in vaudeville productions will be interested in his first Vocalion records, which include two clever patriotic song-hits of his own composition--" It's A Long Way To Berlin, But We'll Get There '(Fields-Flatow) and' Throw No Stones' (Fields-Morse). Mr. Fields is a member of the 71st Regiment, and has been featuring these selections in a recruiting campaign for the State-assisted by several other enlisted stage favorites and fifty soldiers. “At Vocalion, Fields recorded some tracks with Ford Dabney's band in early 1919, such as Johnny's In Town . These recordings are considered to be the first recordings in music history in which a white vocalist was accompanied by black background musicians.

On September 18, 1919, Fields and brothers Jack and Irving Kaufman signed a contract with Emerson, for which they worked and released records as The Three Kaufields for the next three years . This exclusive contract ended again in the summer of 1921, as he was again recording pieces for Victor at that time.

Own label and bankrupt

On January 2, 1923, Fields, together with his business partner Louis A. Duhan, opened the Arthur Fields Song Shop in the building of the Hotel Theresas ( 125th Street and Seventh Avenue ) in New York City , which however moved to 2094 Seventh Avenue a few months later. This store sold instruments , sheet music, and records . In addition to Vocalion singles, Fields' store also offered records from Arthur Fields Melody Records , which only released a few records with Fields songs. The recordings actually came from Olympic Records and were pressed by the Fletcher Record Company . But the business didn't really want to go and bankruptcy was announced on August 1st. Field's creditors were Bernard Meyer, the Aeolian Company, and the Plaza Music Company . Duhant had left the company by then, leaving Fields in debt of $ 14,973, a large sum for the time.

After his financial disaster, Fields returned to vaudeville and sang in the Avon Comedy Four group for several months . In November 1925 Fields became a member of the Peerless Entertainers , which in addition to Fields consisted of the singers Frank Croxton, Albert Campbell, Charles Harrison, John Meyer, the pianist Gitz Rice and the saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft . This group could be booked to perform in the New York area, but their popularity was low and Fields quickly turned back to making records.

Waning popularity

Between April 1926 and September 1927 Fields played fourteen records for Edison. From this point on, Fields was only under contract with the cheaper labels, as his popularity slowly declined. As Arthur Fields and his Orchestra , he released songs with Perfect Records and made recordings with Fred Hall's band in 1929 for Banner Records . Fields worked closely with Hall over the next few years. Their first single came out in September 1926 with Lay Me Down To Sleep In Carolina (Emerson 3068). In the next few years, Fields appeared as a solo artist and with Fred Hall and his band on labels such as Bell Records , Okeh Records , Domino Records , Duophone Records , Gennett Records , Romeo Records , Harmony Records , Banner, Pathé and Perfect.

A strange facet in Field's career was his work for Gray Gull Records between 1927 and 1928. For Gray Gull and his sub-label Radiex Records , Fields played over 160 songs in just one year under the pseudonym “Mr. X “a. So he was more active with Gray Gull than with any other record company.

Later career

Between 1928 and 1932 Fields and Hall turned to the then popular old-time music , later country music . With a group that called themselves Rex Cole's Mountaineers on radio , they recorded various folk songs with a jazz line-up. The band was very popular on WEAF. In 1932 Fields and Hall left the band; from 1935 they could be heard every morning as The Streamliners on the radio. Around 1941, when the duo broke up, Fields started his own publishing house where he published religious songs from his childhood. During the Second World War he released some records on Hit Records, including The Fuehrer's Face , which referred to Adolf Hitler .

In 1946 Fields moved with her from New York City to Hollywood , Florida due to the illness of his wife Selma . In Miami he started the Arthur Fields Program on the station WKAT , which he led until his death. In March 1953 he suffered a stroke and was therefore taken to a nursing home in Largo , where he was killed in a fire.

Discography

Singles

Making a complete list of all publications is difficult to manage because of Field's extensive work. A listing of his singles with Fred Hall's country band can be found under Rex Cole's Mountaineers .

Albums

2005: Eleven More Months & Ten Days

Web links

Commons : Arthur Fields  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• biography
• History of the Fields Record Shop
• Discography of Fields' Blue Amberol recordings
• Discography of Fields' Radio Transcriptions 1930–1938
• Arthur Fields on Hillbilly-Music.com (English)
• Entry in the All Music Guide
• Fields' Gesammelte Werle for free download at Archive.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tim Grazyk: The Encyclopedia of Acoustic Era Recording Artists