He also composed songs, the most famous of which was “Miami Beach Rhumba,” a 1946 number about a traveler who starts out for Havana and ends up in the Jewish Riviera of the song’s title.

With lyrics by Albert Gamse — “I’ll save Havana for mañana” was one line — it became a staple of 1950s and ’60s bar mitzvahs. The Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat turned it into a hit in 1947, and Tito Puente recorded it as well. Fifty years later, Woody Allen used it in his film “Deconstructing Harry.” (John Camacho is also credited with a hand in the composing.)

Other Fields collaborations included “Managua, Nicaragua,” a hit for Guy Lombardo, and “Chantez, Chantez,” a sprightly melody that Dinah Shore recorded in 1957.

Yet in the last decades of his life he was better known as a New York City lounge pianist, still performing as recently as March at spots near his Central Park South home, like the dining room of the Park Lane Hotel, the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel and Nino’s Tuscany Steakhouse. Though he sometimes played to near-empty rooms or ones with distracted customers, he was a restless man who could not stop working.

“I love what I do, and the piano is my best friend,” he told an interviewer.

Though depending on a walker to get around, his fingers hobbled by arthritis, he continued to find his way to the keyboard, stylish in a blue blazer and pocket square, his customary two-olive vodka martini perched on top of the piano. (He also liked to keep a pile of fliers there, with titles like “Secrets for Longevity” and tips like “Eat four hours before bedtime (you’ll digest better).”)