Jerry Fielding

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Although best remembered for the bold, evocative film scores he composed for tough-guy filmmakers Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood, Jerry Fielding was also a premier arranger of the swing era, later headlining a series of space age pop LPs as well. Born Joshua Feldman in Pittsburgh on June 17, 1922, Fielding was a child prodigy who claimed among his earliest influences Bernard Herrmann’s pioneering scores for the radio dramas of Orson Welles. A pupil of theatrical conductor Max Atkins, he was regularly writing arrangements for theatrical pit bands while still in high school, and at 18 was hired by guitar great Alvino Rey. When Rey relocated his musical enterprise from New York City to Los Angeles, he brought Fielding with him and by the mid-’40s he was an in-demand freelance arranger, writing charts for swing icons including Tommy Dorsey, Kay Kyser, and Charlie Barnet. Fielding also wrote extensively for radio, including programs hosted by Hoagy Carmichael, Kate Smith, and the Andrews Sisters, and was eventually named musical director of The Jack Paar Show. By 1952 Fielding helmed his own jazz orchestra, which was the house band on Groucho Marx’s popular television game show You Bet Your Life, but as a self-confessed “loudmouthed crusader” who received death threats for hiring African-American musicians, it was inevitable that he would run afoul of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunts. Called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Fielding took the Fifth Amendment, and his Hollywood career crumbled. Fielding sought refuge in Las Vegas, where he served as musical director for acts including Abbott & Costello and Debbie Reynolds.
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