Jerry Fielding (born Joshua Itzhak Feldman; June 17, 1922 – February 17, 1980)Redman, Nick. "Fielding, Jerry". Jackson, Kenneth T.; Markoe, Karen E.; Markoe, Arnold (1995). Dictionary of American Biography; Supplement 10: 1976–1980. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 238–239. . was an American jazz musician, bandleader, arranger, and film composer. He was a three-time Oscar nominee for Best Original Score, and an Emmy Award winner.
He began his career as a popular arranger for radio orchestras, but was blacklisted in 1953, subsequently working in Las Vegas. In the following decade, he re-emerged as a composer of film and television scores, most notably Westerns, crime, and action films. He was best known for his collaborations with Sam Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood, and Michael Winner.
His notable film scores include The Wild Bunch (1969), Johnny Got His Gun (1971), Straw Dogs (also 1971), The Mechanic (1972), The Gambler (1974), The Bad News Bears (1976), The Outlaw Josey Wales (also 1976), Demon Seed (1977), and Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He was also noted for his work on the television series Star Trek and Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
Early life and education Fielding was born Joshua Itzhak Feldman in Pittsburgh,Feather, Leonard (1960). The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz. New York: Bonanza Books. Page 214. to Russian Jewish parents Hiram Harris Feldman and Esther Feldman. By 1930, "Joshua Itzhak" had been discarded once and for all, as evidenced by both the 1930 US Census and the recollections, published more than seven decades later, of fellow Pittsburgher Henry Mancini.1930 United States Census. FamilySearch.Mancini, Henry (2001). Did They Mention the Music?. New York: Cooper Square Press. p. 22. . During the ensuing decade, Jerry briefly experimented with the trombone, then took up the clarinet and joined the high school band,Cohen, Harold V. (March 7, 1953). "The Drama Desk: Local Scrappings". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved November 26, 2017. eventually earning a scholarship to the Carnegie Institute for Instrumentalists. After a short attendance, because of ill health he was bedridden for two years with an undiagnosed ailment. While housebound, Feldman listened to the radio, and became a fan of the big band sound and Bernard Herrmann's music for Orson Welles's radio dramas.
Freelance arranger Somewhat recuperated, Feldman worked at Pittsburgh's Stanley Theater (where his fellow players included Mancini, Erroll Garner and Billy May),"The Gambler". Focus on Film. Volume 19. 1974. Retrieved 2014-04-15. "In his youth, he played in the local theater's orchestra pit alongside, at times, Henry Mancini, Billy May and Errol (sic) Garner." learning composition and arranging there from the theater's pit orchestra conductor, Max Adkins (as did Mancini and another notable Pittsburgh native, Billy Strayhorn)."Composers / Arrangers". Pittsburgh Music History. Retrieved 2014-04-15. In June 1941, shortly before his nineteenth birthday, Feldman left Pittsburgh to work for Alvino Rey's swing band.Cohen Harold V.. "The Drama Desk; Local Scrappings". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 12, 1941. Retrieved 2014-04-14. His contributions to the band's repertoire included an arrangement of "Three Blind Mice""Liner notes, Alvino Rey and his Orchestra, 1940–41, Vol. 1" at Internet Archive. Retrieved 2020-04-06. and an original composition, "Picnic in Purgatory"."'I'm Glad There Is You': fox trot (Music, 1942)". WorldCat. Retrieved 2014-04-14."Just Released – B11501 'I'm Glad There Is You' and 'Picnic in Purgatory'". Billboard. April 18, 1942. Retrieved 2014-04-14.
This job ended when most of the band was drafted. Too frail for service, Feldman became vocal arranger for Lucy Ann Polk's Town CriersJohnson, Erskine. "In Hollywood". The Courier News. January 17, 1945. Retrieved 2014-04-15. "Cradle row has something new to crow about, Hollywood's "hottest" singing group, The Town Criers, average 19 years of age ... Their arranger is a baby, too – 22-year-old Jerry Feldman." and then joined Kay Kyser's band. He became their chief arranger in 1945."Arranger for Band" . The Jewish Criterion. March 9, 1945. Retrieved 2014-04-15. "Jerry Feldman, son of Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Feldman, of Wightman Street, is now head arranger for the Kay Kyser Band." In addition, he arranged for the big bands of Mitchell Ayres,Ames, Walter. "Frustrated Jerry Fielding Scoring On Own Video Show". The Los Angeles Times. October 17, 1952. Claude Thornhill, Jimmie Lunceford, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet and Les Brown.
Radio work: from Feldman to Fielding
Feldman arranged for the Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge radio program, and then became the band leader for several radio programs: The Jack Paar Program (1947–1949), The Hardy Family 1952–1953, as well as work on The Fitch Bandwagon, The Life of Riley, and the Sweeney and March Show.
In the spring of 1947, having suitably impressed prospective employer, radio emcee Jack Paar (and his production team), Feldman was compelled to change his name as a prerequisite to securing the position of providing live on-air music (records were still not allowed on the air in 1947). He chose the name Fielding, and he would recount this transformation with some bitterness almost 25 years later:
They told me I was not going on with any name as Jewish as Feldman. I don't think there's any lessening of prejudice today. There's just more politeness about where and when it happens now. I think it's going to be the downfall of Homo sapiens.
In 1948, Fielding replaced Billy May as musical director on Groucho Marx's radio program You Bet Your Life. In 1951, the famous comedian brought Fielding along for the same musical directing job when he moved "You Bet Your Life" to television, one of the first hit shows of the new medium, and a job Fielding would hold until 1953.You Bet Your Life (quiz, with Groucho Marx). ClassicThemes. Retrieved 2014-04-16. In June 1952, drawing on the same musicians employed in his radio and television work, he formed the Jerry Fielding Orchestra for the purposes of performing and recording his music while the television season was in its annual summer hiatus.Ames, Walter. "Television, Radio, News and Programs: Radio and TV Tidbits". The Los Angeles Times. June 25, 1952. "Jerry Fielding, Groucho Marx's musical director, has organized a band for recording sessions during the summer lull."Tomkins, Les. "Jerry Fielding Interview One: From the Bands to the Films" . Jazz Professional. !974. Retrieved 2014-04-16.
Fielding later recalled the reasons for doing this: "So a couple of [professional jazz] guys formed little bands, not to go in buses on the road, but to record with, do a few weekends at the Palladium, just rehearse, and keep the thing going. We were doing it for each other, really. And the first records I made—that's what they were. Frank had put a band together for the Palladium: and I said: "If he can do it, I can do it." I had five radio shows at the time: so we put this bunch together, and we started to do some wild things. ... In that band were Conrad Gozzo, Sam Donahue, Shelly Manne, Johnny Williams, Buddy Collette, Red Callender—everybody. I knew what these guys could do, and I wrote to the absolute limit of their abilities, which no one else did. We did some spectacular performances. Albert Marks recorded us a couple of times, and those are the early Trend records which are such collector's items now. I think they were collector's items the day they went in the store; they never really sold well."
The group would be featured on Fielding's own short-lived but well-received all-music TV series, the JF TV Show, and by the following summer, had released its debut LP, Jerry Fielding and His Great New Orchestra (Trend, 1953)."Album and LP Reviews". Billboard. August 15, 1953. Retrieved 2014-04-17.
Blacklisted, but welcomed in Vegas
Though never a Communist, Fielding was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1953 during the anti-Communist hysteria, particularly in Congress, and the FBI, who were in the throes of punishing the many talented FDR supporters in entertainment who had helped to defeat isolationists before Pearl Harbor. This was done by smearing them with innuendo and charges of Communism. Fielding's sin appeared to be his Radio Union membership (which was obligatory for all nationally broadcast radio performers) which was in turn one of a dozen or more unions in the Hollywood Writers Mobilization which was founded in 1941 to promote show business efforts against Nazism and in support of the American war effort. However, Fielding later joked that all the committee really wanted was to get him to name Groucho Marx as a communist, which he refused to do. He also believed he was being singled out for his integrated bands, using African-American jazz performers in his radio and television music, which was carried live at the time. All integration and equal rights to black performers were deeply offensive to some HUAC members, and to FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover.
Fielding took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to divulge the names of any colleagues who might be suspected of "Communism", doing so knowing that pleading the Fifth would damage his thriving radio and television career, as it did. He was blacklisted by the national television and radio networks, who were being pressed by these same forces with a similar fate if they "failed to cooperate."
The blacklist destroyed Fielding's embryonic career as an on-screen television host, but the talented musician survived what would be a decade-long exile from broadcasting by returning to his live performing and recording careers, both as a featured artist and a freelance arranger. In Las Vegas, Nevada he led a band at the Royal Las Vegas Hotel; in addition, he toured for the only time with his name orchestra, which also released several albums during this period, first for a little-known independent label, with Jerry Fielding Plays a Dance Concert (Trend, 1954), followed by Sweet with a Beat (1955), Fielding's Formula (1957), and Hollywoodwind Jazztet (1958), all on Decca. His jazz and pop background allowed him to survive while the blacklist destroyed the concert and film-based careers of musicians such as Schoenberg champion and film composer Louis Gruenberg and the first black Broadway and film star, Paul Robeson.
The end of the blacklist In 1959, musical star Betty Hutton insisted that the still-blacklisted Jerry Fielding direct her new series, The Betty Hutton Show, a television series for CBS, having gotten to know him while they were both working the music circuit in Las Vegas.Cook, Howard. "Fielding Inked by Signature". Billboard. October 26, 1959. Retrieved 2014-04-16. Television had been a surreptitious haven for the blacklisted writers, directors and composers for many years, and it was Desilu Productions, founded by Lucille Ball, who'd briefly been a member of the Communist Party and also dragged before HUAC in the early 1950s, who backed Hutton's choice. With her own career hanging by a thread, Hutton – along with Desilu and CBS – made a brave stand against the blacklist in television, but the show unfortunately failed.