A KEY LOSS
City pianist Fields dies in his sleep at 101
LEGENDARY NEW York City pianist Irving Fields, who became a household name in 1959 with his album “Bagels and Bongos,” has died. He was 101.
Fields died peacefully in his sleep on Saturday at his Central Park South home, neighbor and caretaker Sylvia Winrich said.
The artist who wrote and performed hundreds of original songs had celebrated his Aug. 4 birthday less than three weeks ago.
Fields sold more than 2 million copies of “Bagels and Bongos” and blended traditional Jewish melodies with the hipswaying Cuban rhythms he learned as a musician playing on Caribbean-bound cruise ships.
“I brought all the wonderful music I heard in Havana to America,” he said.
The album is one of nearly 100 that he recorded over the course of his nine-decade career. The gregarious pianist gave his songs kitschy titles like “Mazeltov Merengue,” “Havannah Negila” and “Yankel Doodle.”
Earlier this month, Fields told the Daily News his secret to long life was sex at least four times a week, drinking one martini a day and making music.
“I wake up every morning and look in the newspaper and if my name isn’t in the obituaries, I go back to sleep,” he joked, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin.
Fields’ fame helped him travel the world, “twice,” he said, where he played clubs like the Copacabana and Caesars Palace, and appear on television programs like “The Jackie Gleason Show.”
He also once passed on starring in his own local TV show in Los Angeles because he didn’t want to move from New York.
The job went to a then-littleknown pianist named Liberace.
“Lee (as Liberace was known to his friends) says to me one day, ‘You know, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have any of this — you opened the door for me, for my whole career,’ ” Fields said.
Born in the Lower East Side in 1915, Fields started playing music when he was 8.
He didn’t like the tedium of “boring” beginner scales but said he found his calling writing his own tunes.
Even dogged by health issues, Fields kept working when he could. His most recent gig was as the house pianist at Nino’s Tuscany, a steakhouse near his Midtown home but had been on a five-month hiatus after a bout with pneumonia.
In recent times, Fields sparingly returned to his job and could occasionally be found behind the keys of the restaurant’s baby grand piano.
He is survived by his wife, Ruth; children Mark Fields and Diane Fields Shaffren; step-children Penny and Peter, and seven grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held Tuesday at Riverside Chapel on the Upper West Side at 12:30 p.m.