From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Thu May 2, 2002  1:14 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Frank Fields
 
FRANK FIELDS

Born 2 May 1914, Plaquemine, Louisiana

(Upright) Bass player. Fields was a member of Cosimo Matassa's Studio Band
and plays on countless New Orleans sessions, including Fats Domino's first
recordings ("The Fat Man" etc.) and lots of other Domino tracks, plus the Little
Richard hits on Specialty that were recorded in New Orleans.
The sound of the Studio Band had caught the attention of many record companies.
Only a small group of musicians was used, and it became such a closed shop
that it was known as "the clique". From the late forties until circa 1957 the
band
consisted of Frank Fields on bass, Earl Palmer on drums, Ernest McLean or Justin
Adams on guitar, Edward Frank or Salvador Doucette on piano, Lee Allen on tenor
saxophone and Red Tyler on baritone sax. All these people had played in the band
of Dave Bartholomew, who had formed his own band in 1946. As a result, the
Studio
Band is often referred to as "the Dave Bartholomew Band" or "the Fats Domino
Band",
but these were touring bands, while the people mentioned above were far too busy
in
the studio to go on the road.
Like Oscar Wills (T.V. Slim), Frank always kept his job of TV repair man as a
sideline.

Further reading: John Broven, Walking To New Orleans (1974), especially p.
86-95.