Alvin Fielder

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Alvin Fielder (b. November 23, 1935, Meridian, Mississippi) is an American jazz drummer. He was a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

Fielder began playing drums at age 12, heavily influenced by recordings of Max Roach. After completing high school he studied under Ed Blackwell and went to graduate school in pharmacology. After taking his degree at the University of Illinois, he began playing in Chicago, co-founding the AACM in 1963. Over the next several years Fielder played with Sun Ra, Muhal Richard Abrams, Eddie Harris, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson and Roscoe Mitchell.

Fielder largely left music after the early 1970s, and in 1977 he opened a pharmacy in his home state of Mississippi. In 1982 he returned to jazz, playing with The Lifters and later working with the Improvisational Arts Quartet. He recorded in 1987 with Ahmed Abdullah, Charles Brackeen, and Dennis Gonzalez, and continued exploring in the free jazz vein in the 1990s with Joel Futterman, Kidd Jordan, and others. He toured with Andrew Lamb in 2002, and released the album A Measure of Vision under his own name in 2007.