having suitably impressed prospective employer, radio emcee Jack Paar (and his production team), Feldman was compelled to change his name as a prerequisite to securing the position of providing live on-air music (records were still not allowed on the air in 1947). He chose the name Fielding, and he would recount this transformation with some bitterness almost 25 years later: They told me I was not going on with any name as Jewish as Feldman. I don't think there's any lessening of prejudice today. There's just more politeness about where and when it happens now. I think it's going to be the downfall of Homo sapiens. In 1948, Fielding replaced Billy May as musical director on Groucho Marx's radio program You Bet Your Life. In 1951, the famous comedian brought Fielding along for the same musical directing job when he moved "You Bet Your Life" to television, one of the first hit shows of the new medium, and a job Fielding would hold until 1953. In June 1952, drawing on the same musicians employed in his radio and television work, he formed the Jerry Fielding Orchestra for the purposes of performing and recording his music while the television season was in its annual summer hiatus. Fielding later recalled the reasons for doing this: "So a couple of [professional jazz] guys formed little bands, not to go in buses on the road, but to record with, do a few weekends at the Palladium, just rehearse, and keep the thing going. We were doing it for each other, really. And the first records I made—that's what they were. Frank had put a band together for the Palladium: and I said: "If he can do it, I can do it." I had five radio shows at the time: so we put this bunch together, and we started to do some wild things. ... In that band were Conrad Gozzo, Sam Donahue, Shelly Manne, Johnny Williams, Buddy Collette, Red Callender—everybody. I knew what these guys could do, and I wrote to the absolute limit of their abilities, which no one else did. We did some spectacular performances. Albert Marks recorded us a couple of times, and those are the early Trend records which are such collector's items now. I think they were collector's items the day they went in the store; they never really sold well." The group would be featured on Fielding's own