MICKEY FIELDS CD RELEASE – OCT. 27
BALTIMORE: An historic jazz event happens this Sunday October 27, starting at 5pm, at the Caton Castle in Baltimore. It is the release party for a CD celebrating the music of Wilfred “Mickey” Fields, who died in 1995. (NOTE: there is still time to contribute to the Kickstarter site for production of this CD.)
Fields was a Baltimore-area jazz saxophonist, a local legend who although highly regarded by musicians nation-wide, preferred to remain in Baltimore. Fields began his career with the jump blues band The Tilters. As a solo artist, he recorded on Atlantic Records and Groove Merchant. The Tilters played for the great Baltimore-born vocalist Ethel Ennis.
Now a new CD has been produced by a partnership of the Left Bank Jazz Society, the Baltimore Jazz Alliance, and journalist and jazz enthusiast Eliot Caroom. The CD contains a digitized recording made by the Left Bank Jazz Society back in January of 1966, of a quintet consisting of Walter Namuth, guitar; Phil Harris, bass; Claude Hubbard, piano; Purnell Rice, drums; and Fields himself on tenor sax.
The event on Sunday will include about an hour of listening, followed by a live performance by some of Baltimore’s jazz stalwarts, HAROLD ADAMS on sax, GREG HATZA on organ, and ROBERT SHAHID on drums. Caton Castle is located at 20 S. Caton Ave, Baltimore, MD 21229. Phone (410) 566-7086. http://www.catoncastle.com/calendar.html. Cover charge is $15, which includes a free copy of the CD
Other Links:
“Sax in the City,” Baltimore City Paper article by Geoffrey Himes, 7/21/2004: http://www2.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=8602
An eight-minute documentary of Mickey’s life, with music and video of the man himself, tearing it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPu41R8Li5w&noredirect=1
“Wilfred ‘Mickey’ Fields, famed jazz musician” – Baltimore Sun article, Jan. 20, 1995, by Fred Rasmussen: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-01-20/news/1995020066_1_jazz-musician-mickey-playing-the-sax
–Liz Fixsen
A kind man, and devoted husband and father.
Diedra from Beryl Ave.