Is 80 a good age to think about taking life easier?
Two Tuscaloosa men — Chesley Johnson, 88, and Marshall Fields, 83 — would say, "No." The duo have quite a slate of activities each week, including involvement in the orchestra of Calvary Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa, in Tuscaloosa Baptist Association.
According to Craig Henson, director of Calvary Baptist’s orchestra for the last seven years, a lot of people reach their 80s and "assume that their age limits what they can do."
But Johnson said, "I’d rather wear out than rust out."
He and Fields are the oldest of the 25 or so orchestra members, said Henson, who also serves as band director at Brookwood High School.
These two fellows not only bring more than 140 years of combined musical experience to the orchestra, but they also provide comic relief at the practices, Henson said.
"Literally they are the life of the party," he said. Fields and Johnson pick at each other a great deal, and their playful banter especially tickles the funny bones of the high school and college students in the orchestra.
Both play trumpet and fluegelhorn and trace their love of music back to adolescence.
Johnson began playing at 14 after trading $1 and a leaky pup tent for a leaky cornet. In college, he learned to play trumpet. He has played in every place he has lived in the United States, as well as in the Philippines.
For more than half a century, Johnson also taught Sunday School in the various locales that he and his wife, Marjorie, called home. A lifetime deacon at Calvary, he has been part of its orchestra since it began about eight years ago. He also plays trumpet each week during song time for the Sunday School class he attends.
Marjorie Johnson pointed out that her husband taught improvisation to one of their five children — Birch Johnson, a professional trombone player in New York who has performed with the Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman and Blues Brothers bands. Currently he is lending his talent to the Broadway production of "Hairspray."
As a youth, Fields admired the talent of his older brother, Cecil, who played trumpet.
When the time came that Marshall Fields could learn to play, he and Cecil shared a horn because the family could afford only one.
Then the day arrived in the 1930s when Marshall Fields became a professional. A man from Eutaw hired the 14-year-old to help one Saturday in a tract-distribution effort that covered Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Montgomery, Marion and Greensboro. Fields’ part was to play "All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name" on the trumpet.
At the end of the day, he was paid $10. (His dad was earning a respectable $37.50 a week then.)
Like Johnson, Fields has been with Calvary’s orchestra from its inception, even though he was a member of another church at the time. During the orchestra’s early years, he would teach Sunday School at nearby Alberta Baptist Church and then go to Calvary to perform in the worship service.
Fields and his wife, Mickey, later joined Calvary, where the father of three is a deacon, is in charge of the Allen R. Watson Men’s Prayer Breakfast each Friday morning, serves on the senior committee and is director of the Adult I Sunday School division.
In addition to participating in Calvary’s orchestra, both Fields and Johnson are involved in community musical endeavors. They are members of the 5th Regiment Band of their Civil War re-enactment group and attend reunions of the University of Alabama’s big-band ensemble, Alabama Cavaliers.
Fields performs in the five-piece combo Paper Moon, while Johnson is in the seven-piece Dixie Downbeats. Also Johnson performs with the jazz band of Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa. Fields often is called on to play at funerals.
Fields said learning to play an instrument affords a person "a lifetime of pleasure and a lifetime of service."
Henson summed up the men’s dedication in four words: "They just love playing."
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