The documented story
The band recorded “T-Town Blues” for Vocalion in 1939, appeared at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in 1942, performed more than one hundred military-camp shows and twelve overseas broadcasts during World War II, and later scored a 1959 top-ten gold record with “In the Mood.” Fields retired from active bandleading in the late 1960s and entered the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 1989.
People and leadership
Ernie Fields was founder and bandleader. The present packet does not attempt a complete sideman chronology.
Community and organization
The orchestra was a professional touring and recording organization rooted in Tulsa rather than a city-sponsored band.
Reading the evidence
The Royal Entertainers, the large territory orchestra, and the later smaller band are phases of Fields’s organization; the packet should name the phase when making specific claims.
Questions for further research
A full personnel and recording-session chronology is optional enrichment.
Dated evidence in this record
- 1920 – 1939
The official OHS account documents Ernie Fields’s Tulsa Royal Entertainers as a popular dance orchestra in the 1920s and identifies a 1939 Vocalion recording, establishing interwar professional and commercial activity.
- 1936
A Smithsonian finding aid identifies an Ernie Fields Orchestra photograph captioned Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1936.
- 1939 – 1959
Recorded T-Town Blues for Vocalion in New York in 1939. In the Mood became a hit in 1959.
- 1942
Savoy Ballroom engagement in 1942; more than 100 military-camp shows during World War II.