Scott Fields

guitar

He was born in Chicago on the 27th day of Elul in 5719 (sharing my birthday are Steve McCall, Freddie King, and Buddy Rich, who said I had a lot of gall sharing his birthday, since he played with Sinatra, Bird, and blah blah). I lived in Chicago Heights until I turned 14, when I ran away from home. For a while I panhandled and worked as a spotter for drug dealers in the Hyde Park neighborhood (where the AACM flowered) on the South Side. That’s when I first learned guitar, sitting in the wings of the Regal Theater and listening to blues musicians on Maxwell Street. That’s also where I earned pocket change stealing hubcaps from tourists’ cars and then selling them back as identical replacements. For a few quarters musicians like Hounddog Taylor and Scotty Honeywealth (of Scotty and the Ribtips) were willing to share a little of what they knew. Eventually I settled on the near north side (at the time a land of earnest folk singers and money-grubbing rock bands) before moving to Madison, Wisconsin a coon’s age ago. Now I spend most of my time in Cologne, Germany, which, among other things, is home to the James Choice Orchestra.