Going Back to T-Town
The Ernie Fields Territory Big Band
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
240 Pages | 6 x 9 | 37 b&w illus.
$21.95
$26.95
$21.95
There was a time when countless young people in the Midwest, South, and Southwest went to dances and stage shows to hear a territory band play. Territory bands traveled from town to town, performing jazz and swing music, and Tulsa-based musician Ernie Fields (1904–97) led one of the best. In Going Back to T-Town, Ernie’s daughter, Carmen Fields, tells a story of success, disappointment, and perseverance extending from the early jazz era to the 1960s. This is an enlightening account of how this talented musician and businessman navigated the hurdles of racial segregation during the Jim Crow era.
Because few territory bands made recordings, their contributions to the development of jazz music are often overlooked. Fortunately, Ernie Fields not only recorded music but also loved telling stories. He shared his “tales from the road” with his daughter, a well-known Boston journalist, and his son, Ernie Fields Jr., who has carried on his legacy as a successful musician and music contractor. As much as possible, Carmen Fields tells her father’s story in his own voice: how he weathered the ups and downs of the music industry and maintained his optimism even while he faced entrenched racial prejudice and threats of violence.
After traveling with his band all over the United States, Fields eventually caught the attention of renowned music producer John Hammond. In 1939, Hammond arranged for recording sessions and bookings that included performances in the famed Apollo Theater in New York. Ernie finally scored a top-ten hit in 1959 with his rock-and-roll rendition of “In the Mood.” At a time when most other territory bands had faded, the Ernie Fields Orchestra continued to perform.
A devoted husband and family man, Ernie Fields also respected and appreciated his fellow musicians. The book includes a “Roll Call” of his organization’s members, based on notes he kept about them. Going Back to T-Town is a priceless source of information for historians of American popular music and African American history.
Because few territory bands made recordings, their contributions to the development of jazz music are often overlooked. Fortunately, Ernie Fields not only recorded music but also loved telling stories. He shared his “tales from the road” with his daughter, a well-known Boston journalist, and his son, Ernie Fields Jr., who has carried on his legacy as a successful musician and music contractor. As much as possible, Carmen Fields tells her father’s story in his own voice: how he weathered the ups and downs of the music industry and maintained his optimism even while he faced entrenched racial prejudice and threats of violence.
After traveling with his band all over the United States, Fields eventually caught the attention of renowned music producer John Hammond. In 1939, Hammond arranged for recording sessions and bookings that included performances in the famed Apollo Theater in New York. Ernie finally scored a top-ten hit in 1959 with his rock-and-roll rendition of “In the Mood.” At a time when most other territory bands had faded, the Ernie Fields Orchestra continued to perform.
A devoted husband and family man, Ernie Fields also respected and appreciated his fellow musicians. The book includes a “Roll Call” of his organization’s members, based on notes he kept about them. Going Back to T-Town is a priceless source of information for historians of American popular music and African American history.
Carmen Fields is an Emmy Award–winning broadcast news journalist who currently produces and hosts the public affairs program Higher Ground on WHDH-TV, Boston. She co-anchored WGBH’s Ten O’Clock News from 1987 to 1991 and wrote the script for the American Experience documentary “Goin’ Back to T-Town” (1993).
“This perceptive book is an insightful account, appealing to the aficionado and scholar alike, of the career and musical journey of bandleader Ernie Fields.”—Todd Wright, Professor and Director of Jazz Studies, Hayes School of Music, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
“In piecing together her father’s musical journey, Carmen Fields highlights an important untold story, but also paints a fuller picture of the strength that emanated from the much talked about Tulsa, Oklahoma, of twentieth-century America.”—Wil Haygood, author of Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World
"Carmen Fields has written a feast of a book about the pioneering work of her father, a talented and entrepreneurial jazzman back when jazz was coming into its own. We learn what Tulsa was like in its heyday, what touring the South was like for a Black orchestra, and how a passionate, tenacious, and enormously likable man built a nationally respected orchestra. This is a marvelous story, told authoritatively and with great humanity.”—Geneva Overholser, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, former editor of the Des Moines Register, and director of the Annenberg School of Journalism (2008–2013)
“Carmen Fields’s book is ripe with little-known Black music history and heartfelt vignettes of how Black folks make life ‘do what it do’ when the odds are against them. But most of all, it is an apt tribute to her father.”—Betty Bayé in Morgan Global Journalism Review
“Despite the brevity of this book, it is obvious that a lot of work has gone into its production over . . . the past half century, and the names that have been interviewed for inclusion are, frankly, mind-blowing. . . . An entertaining read and, I’m sure, a useful research tool for future discographers and music historians.”—Blues & Rhythm
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