Arthur Fields was a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 singer (baritone

Baritone

Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

) and songwriter.

He was born Abraham ("Abe") Finkelstein in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 in Philadelphia, but grew up mainly in Utica, New York

Utica, New York

Utica is a city in and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 62,235 at the 2010 census, an increase of 2.6% from the 2000 census....

. He became a professional singer as a youngster. Around 1908 he toured with Guy Brother's Minstrel Show

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

, and helped form a vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 act "Weston, Fields and Carroll".

His first hit as a songwriter was On The Mississippi (1912) which he wrote the music for with Harry Carroll

Harry Carroll

Harry Carroll, a famous American songwriter, pianist and composer, was born on November 28, 1892, in Atlantic City, New Jersey and died December 26, 1962, in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. He taught himself how to play the piano and began playing in movie houses before he finished grade school...

 and Ballard MacDonald

Ballard MacDonald

Ballard MacDonald was a Tin Pan Alley lyricist.Born in Portland, Oregon, among his credits are:Beautiful Ohio, Rose of Washington Square, Second Hand Rose, Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, Back Home Again in Indiana, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Play That Barbershop Chord, Clap Hands, Here Comes...

 supplied the lyrics. In 1914 he wrote the lyrics to Aba Daba Honeymoon, which was revived for the 1950 M.G.M. film Two Weeks With Love

Two Weeks with Love

Two Weeks with Love is a 1950 romantic musical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Roy Rowland, based on story by John Larkin who co-wrote the screenplay with Dorothy Kingsley.Set in the early 1900s, the film focuses on the Robinson family...

and thus got a renewed popularity which brought Fields large royalty incomes during his last two years.

From 1914 onward he recorded with many bands and for many labels and had a varied career in the recording industry. His 1919 recordings with bandleader Ford Dabney may be the very first recordings of a white singer backed by a black band. For a period Fields also formed a vocal trio with brothers Jack and Irving Kaufman

Irving Kaufman (singer)

Irving Kaufman born Isidore Kaufman Syracuse, New York was a prolific early twentieth century singer, recording artist and Vaudeville performer...

, billing themselves as "The Three Kaufields". Fields also often appeared on records under pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

s, for example as "Mr X." on Grey Gull Records

Grey Gull Records

Grey Gull Records was a record label based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America from 1919 through 1930. According to the Massachusetts Department of Corporation and Taxation, Grey Gull was officially incorporated on 31 December 1919. It was dissolved on 31 March 1934 Grey Gull...

 and related labels. His last records were made in the early 1940s.

Among Field's most prolific partnerships was the one with band leader and pianist Fred Hall

Fred Hall (musician)

Fred Hall was an American pianist, bandleader and composer.-Life and career:Fred Hall was born in New York and began his musical career working as a song-plugger for various music publishers....

, with whom Fields made plenty of records and co-wrote several songs, often with comic titles like The Shoes We Have Left Are All Right and I Can't Sleep In The Movies Anymore. Hall and Fields also broadcasted

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

 together as Rex Cole's Mountaineers

Rex Cole's Mountaineers

Rex Cole's Mountaineers was an American country music band.The Mountaineers were actually the creation of two New Yorkers, vaudeville singer Arthur Fields and songwriter/bandleader/manager Fred Hall. Fields had had a recording contract with several high-profile labels but never had a hit; Hall...

.

Retiring to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 in 1946 he also worked in radio on WKAT

WKAT

WKAT 1360 is a Spanish talk radio station based in the South Florida area of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.The previous format was conservative talk radio with a lineup that resembled other outlets owned by Salem Communications: Michael Medved, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Savage, and William...

 Miami. He suffered a stroke early in 1953 and was killed in a fire at Littlefield Convalescent Home a little later the same year.

External links

• Arthur Fields online biography by Tim Gracyk
• Arthur Fields's death certificate
• Song Any Old Place the Gang from archive.org
• Arthur Fields cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
  Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
  The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project is a free digital collection maintained by the University of California, Santa Barbara Libraries with streaming and downloadable versions of over 10,000 phonograph cylinders manufactured between 1893 and the mid 1920s.- History :The project began...
  
   at the University of California, Santa Barbara
  University of California, Santa Barbara
  The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
  
  Library.