Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Happy birthday

October 4, 1947

Jim Fielder’s musical path has been a great one. Not surprisingly, it parallels many musicians’ stories and most interesting of all are the bands and performers he has played with as well as simply crossing paths with.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Texas to California

Fielder was born in Denton, TX. He started playing guitar at the age of seven. His early influences in the 1950s were people like Elvis and the Everley Brothers.

In high school he started playing an upright acoustic bass. Ralph Pena, Frank Sinatra’s bassist, tutored him. As a young bassist he listened to musicians such as Ray Brown, Ron Carter, and Charles Mingus.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Tim Buckley

In the 60s his first band was “The Bohemians” a group that Tim Buckley was in as well. They went to amateur nights at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Buffalo Springfield was one of the groups playing there.

Tim Buckley got a recording contract with Electra Records and Fielder played on some of the tracks on Buckley’s first two albums.  

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Frank Zappa

Fielder also played with Mastin & Brewer (later evolved into Brewer & Shipley). The drummer of M & B knew Frank Zappa and an introduction led to Fielder playing with Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as a guitarist. He was with the Mothers when they recorded the Absolutely Free album, but his name does not appear on the album because he’d left the band before the album’s release and Zappa excluded Fielder’s name.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Buffalo Springfield

The band Fielder joined after the Mothers was Buffalo Springfield. He played bass for them while their original bassist, Bruce Palmer, was out of the country in Canada due to visa issues. When Palmer resolved those issues and returned to the band, Fielder left. He did get a shout out on the back of the Springfield’s second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, amongst the many names the band thanked.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Al Kooper > Blood, Sweat and Tears

Another path. Another relationship. Jim Fielder was “in between” bands. While playing at the Fillmore in San Francisco with Buffalo Springfield and the Mothers, Fielder had met Al Kooper and Steve Katz from the  Blues Project. When Kooper left the Project he lived with a neighbor of Fielder’s. Drummer Bobby Colomby joined the nascent group with Katz forming a quartet.

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius joined two months later. They played at the Fillmore East.  Lipsius recruited New York jazz horn players he knew. The final Blood, Sweat and Tears lineup debuted late November ’67 at “The Scene” in New York.

The band released its first album, Child Is Father To the Man, on February 21, 1968. Kooper left soon after, but the band continued with David Clayton Thomas as its lead singer. Their second album, Blood Sweat and Tears, was a huge success and a big part of their invitation to the…

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Fielder’s memories: “We played late Sunday night between Johnny Winter and Crosby, Stills & Nash. The crowd was down to about 50,000 by then, but it still felt like were playing to the whole world. Backstage was like old home week. I got to see a lot of old friends and people I had played with over the years. It was probably the highlight of my career.”

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Neil Sedaka

Fielder stayed with the band until 1974. He returned to Los Angeles in 1974 and began freelancing. He worked with Danny O’Keefe and Chris Hillman and was the musical director for Bing Crosby’s grandson Chris.

Then the opportunity to work with Neil Sedaka was on Fielder’s path in 1976. It was an offer he couldn’t and didn’t refuse and Fielder has basically worked with Sedaka since.

Jim Fielder

Here is an article about an August 2017 Neil Sedaka show in NJ in which the reporter writes about a song Sedaka performed with “expert musician Jim Fielder’s bass part which includes an impossibly difficult slap bass line and an ongoing sequence of electric guitar-inspired figures played simultaneously on his bass!

Much of the information for this entry came from this article.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism & Matilda Josyln Gage

October 4, 1850: Gage [24 years old] signed petition stating that she would face a 6-month prison term and a $2,000 fine rather than obey the Fugitive Slave Law. (F, see June 21, 1851; see Gage for expanded story)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

National Convention of Colored Men

October 4, 1864:  150 black men representing seventeen states and Washington, D.C., assembled in Syracuse, New York, for the National Convention of Colored Men in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, in Syracuse, N.Y at 7 o’clock, P.M.

Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, of Washington, D.C., called the Convention to order, and read the call. John M. Langston, Esq., of Oberlin, O., was chosen temporary Chairman; and Wm. Howard Day, of New Jersey, and St. George R. Taylor, of Pennsylvania, Secretaries.

Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved man who had become a leader in the abolitionist movement, opened the convention by proclaiming, “We are here to promote the freedom, progress, and perfect enfranchisement of the entire colored people of the United States.” Although the Civil War did not end for another six months, historians have referred to this four-day gathering as “the first Reconstruction convention.”

In its Declaration of Wrongs and Rights, convention members summarized the rights they believed necessary to ensure freedom, progress, and meaningful citizenship:

The right to be heard in Congress[;] the right to respect; that due attention should be given to our needs; that proper rewards should be given for our services, and that the immunities and privileges of all other citizens and defenders of the nation’s honor should be conceded to us.

The Declaration’s first point read: As a branch of the human family, we have for long ages been deeply and cruelly wronged by people whose might constituted their right; we have been subdued, not by the power of ideas, but by brute force, and have been unjustly deprived not only of many of our natural rights, but debarred the privileges and advantages freely accorded to other men.

The Convention lasted until October 7. [Convention’s complete proceedings] (next BH, see Dec 30)

William Spencer lynched

October 4, 1916: William Spencer, a 30-year-old Black man and a husband and father of four children, was lynched by a white mob near Graceton, Texas. Mr. Spencer, who was a farmhand, had a confrontation with the constable and was arrested and taken to a local jail, where a white mob seized and lynched him.  [EJI article](next BH, see In May 1917; next Lynching, see July 28, 1917 or see AL2 for expanded chronology)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Emma Goldman

October 4 – 16,1893: Goldman was tried and found guilty of inciting to riot. She was sentenced to one year in the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island in New York’s East River. (see Goldman for expanded story)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Calvin Graham

October 4, 1944: Graham wrote to the Chief of Naval Personnel requesting a discharge certificate. Each of Graham’s requests was denied upon the basis that his enlistment was void and therefore canceled. Also that month, Graham’s claim for arrears of pay and mustering-out pay was presented to the General Accounting Office. (full story see Calvin Graham)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

October 4, 1945: French troops, under the leadership of General Jacques-Philippe Leclere, arrived in Saigon to take over from the British. (see March 2, 1946)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

Sputnik 1

October 4, 1957: the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into earth orbit. The first man-made satellite passes overhead, making one revolution every 90 minutes. [NASA article] (see Oct 5)

Luna 3

October 4, 1959: the Soviet Luna 3 flew  around the moon, taking the first photographs of the far side of the moon. Two more Soviet launches the following year will not achieve proper flight paths. Information about them will be suppressed. (article) (see April 13, 1960)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

Lenny Bruce

October 4, 1961: police arrested comedian Lenny Bruce  at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco on obscenity charges for saying the word “cocksucker.” Bruce was a pioneer in aggressive, politically oriented stand-up comedy, using humor to attack racism, sexual prudery, and religious hypocrisy in American life. Today’s tradition of boundary-breaking stand-up comedy, with respect to language, sex, politics, race, and religion, originated with Lenny Bruce.

Many observers then and now argue that Bruce’s arrests, including those in Chicago and New York City, were prompted not by dirty words but by his comedy routines that made fun of the Catholic Church, which offended local politicians and police. For his New York City arrest, see November 4, 1964. For that arrest, he was pardoned by New York Governer Pataki 39 years later on December 23, 2003. (see June 25, 1963)

Nazi march

October 4, 1976: Frank Collin, leader of a band of Nazi sympathizers from Chicago’s South side, sends a letter to Daniel D. Brown, Director of Parks and Recreation, Skokie Park District, requesting that his group be permitted to march in Skokie’s “Birch Park” on November 6, 1976. (see Oct 25)

Colin Kaepernick

October 4, 2016: NBA’s  Rockets and Knicks opened the season joined arm in arm The Celtics also showed unity as a team, standing together with their arms crossed and heads down. (FS & CK, see Nov 6)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

World Series

Cold War: Yankees v Reds

October 4 – 9, 1961: World Series: NY Yankees vs. the Cincinnati Reds. Yankees won in five games to earn their 19th championship in 39 seasons. This World Series was surrounded by Cold War political puns pitting the “Reds” against the “Yanks”.  next CW, see Oct 6)

Yankees v Giants

October 4 – 16, 1962: World Series matched the defending World Series champions NY  Yankees against the San Francisco Giants. The Yankees took the Series in seven games for the 20th championship in team history.

Cardinals v Red Sox

October 4 – 12, 1967: World Series: St. Louis Cardinals against the Boston Red Sox in a rematch of the 1946 World Series, with the Cardinals winning in seven games.

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

October 4 Music et al

Beatles Ready Set Go

October 4, 1963: appear on BBC’s Ready, Set, Go. Dusty Springfield does intros and asked fan questions. (see Oct 13)

Good Vibrations

October 4 Peace Love Activism

October 4, 1966:  after over six months of recording and production work, the Beach Boys (actually Brian Wilson) released “Good Vibrations.” (NPR story) (see December 10 – 16)

see Gold Rush Festival for more

October 4, 1969, Gold Rush Festival (Lake Amador, CA): 40,000 people attended. (see 43 for expanded list of 1969 festivals)

Green River

October 4 – 31, 1969: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Green River is the Billboard #1 album.

Janis Joplin

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

October 4, 1970 – Janis Joplin, age 27, died. (27 Club) (Woodstock video)

INDEPENDENCE DAY

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

October 4, 1966: Lesotho independent from United Kingdom. [SAhistory article] (see IDs for expanded list of 1960 Independence days)

WAR POWERS ACT

October 4, 1973: Joint conference committee irons out differences between House and Senate War Powers Act bills. (NYT article) (see Oct 10)

Watergate Scandal

October 4, 1974: the trial of Watergate conspirators HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson began, Judge John Sirica presiding. (see Watergate for expanded story)

TERRORISM

October 4, 2002: “Shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, pleaded guilty to all eight counts. (NYT article) (see Nov 4)

Immigration History

October 4, 2019: the Trump administration announced that it would deny visas to immigrants who could prove they would have health insurance or the ability to pay for medical costs once they became permanent residents of the United States.

Trump’s a proclamation ordered consular officers to bar immigrants seeking to live in the United States unless they “will be covered by approved health insurance” or can prove that they have “the financial resources to pay for reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” The program would become effective Nov. 3. [NYT article] (see Oct 11)

US Labor History

October 4, 2023:  some 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers walked off the job in multiple states, kicking off a major health care strike. Kaiser Permanente is one of the country’s larger insurers and health care system operators, serving nearly 13 million people.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, and for one day in Virginia and Washington, D.C. [AP article]  (next LH, see Oct 13)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism