[4],[Yusef Lateef, Booker Ervin, Rene Hall and Teddy Edwards] ("Going Back to T-Town: The Ernie Fields Territory Big Band"] University of Oklahoma Press ISBN 978-0-8061-9184-3 hardcover) From the late 1920s, he led a band called the Royal Entertainers, and eventually began touring more widely, and recording.
This included pianist Ernie Freeman, guitarist Rene Hall (who had previously worked with Fields in the 1930s), saxophonist Plas Johnson, and drummer Earl Palmer.
In 1959 this band had an international hit with an R&B version of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood", credited to the Ernie Fields Orchestra, which reached number 4 on the Billboard chart.
[7] The band, with minor changes of personnel, went on to record instrumentals under many different names, including B. Bumble and the Stingers, the Marketts and the Routers.
[3] His son is the saxophonist and bandleader Ernie Fields, Jr., and his daughter Carmen became a journalist in Boston, where she co-hosted the evening news for WGBH-TV.