By Robin Rowan

To get anywhere in life, you sometimes have to give it a little kick. And that’s just what Harold “The Professor” Andrews has done all of his life, with great success. Although music has been his passion for many years, he needed a jump start from his parents and teachers early on to continue with his musical training. “The Professor” (so named because of his many years as a public school teacher) spent much of his early life in Pensacola, then returned many years later to start Pensacola’s first integrated Big Band. Now 80-something, Andrews lives comfortably in Pensacola, but is eager to share his many experiences, to pass lessons on to a new generation, and mentor younger musicians with a passion that only a seasoned pro can inspire. “My first instrument was the piano,” says Andrews. “I didn’t do much with it. I always thought a person, especially a man, who played the piano was a sissy. The boys would call you ‘Miss Andrews.’” Andrews started playing piano at three years old. He took both violin and piano together and loved the violin, but was told that there wasn’t much of a chance to become a professional musician because of the color of his skin. “That got my mother, ‘cause you know, my mother, anything you said to me wrong, being an only child, she was ready to jump you.” Andrews lived with both his mother and grandmother in Pensacola. His mother lived on South Devillers Street; his grandmother on South Q and Gregory. He liked living with his grandmother best, he says, because she would always let him have his way.

We walked to my first school from Q and Gregory to A and Jackson, about three or four miles. [The school] was called Number 80, a little wooden place, poorly and inadequately kept. We had shabby books with pages missing. But that old sister that I was living with, you went to school rain or shine, whether it was storming, flooding, or whatever.

By the eighth grade, Andrews had learned the alto saxophone, but had some trouble sticking with it, because he also loved baseball. Then a group of friends all decided to learn instruments and get a little band together. Andrews explains: “Instead of my learning the saxophone well enough, I picked up a bass violin and was very hepped on it. I was about 13 years old. We had a group called the “Syncopators,” but later they called us the “Constipators” because the music sounded so bad.” After completing high school at Booker T. Washington in Pensacola, Andrews’ father insisted he come to New York and go to college. When he got to New York, excitement turned to disappointment when he was told that Washington High School was not an accredited school. Andrews was forced to spend an extra year at an accredited New York high school to earn a degree. Then came the City College of New York, a year at the New York School of Music, and finally Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The years in New York were fertile ones for the budding musician. He played with several bands during that time, including two years with Lucky Millinder.

I played the bass and sang some, but Sister Rosetta [the band’s main singer], she was a very dogmatic person and a very demanding person, and she controlled the group. She was just like my mother—I couldn’t do this and I couldn’t do that. The guys weren’t allowed to say certain things around me because I was only 15 years old. I held my own because I could read about 95 chords, because I was taught the proper way. In fact, I was made to read and to learn music the right way.

Andrews got to Tuskegee Institute on a science scholarship, because at the time, he was studying to become a doctor. There he learned to write music, arrangements and compositions. He was also nosy, he says, and quite assertive for his young age. He tells the story of getting into a band at Tuskegee:

This guy was rehearsing his band and I passed by the gym, and I said, ‘Hey, boy,’ (he was a school boy like me), ‘Some part of your band is out of tune.’ And he said, ‘Who are you?’ And Frank Erroll Drye, one of the outstanding bandmasters at Tuskegee, was in the place, and he asked me who I was and I said, ‘My name is Harold Andrews and I’m a musician.’ And later that day, some of the fellows came over to my dorm- itory and one of the guys said, ‘Since you know so much, why aren’t you rehearsing the band?’ And I took him up on it. The fellows liked me because I was a detail person, I went through the rudiments, the movements and so forth, all the different phrases and things, while he was just telling them to play. After they heard the results of the training I was giving them, they made me director of the band. We were called the “Tuskegee Collegiates” and we played the college circuit. We got ourselves a booking agent from Augusta, Georgia. They took us and dressed us up; made us wear uniforms and got us a lot of contacts.

Some of the members of the “Tuskegee Collegiates” went on to make it big: Joe Newman, a trumpet player, went on to the Alabama State Revellers, and from there to the Count Basie band. Joseph Evans became first also sax for Cab Calloway’s band. Wild Bill Davis went with Duke Ellington and was the first to play jazz organ. Andrews explains about another chance meeting in St. Louis:

A bunch of fellows were having a jam session, but nobody was singing. And me with my little nosy self, I went up and said, ‘Hey, man, you don’t have a vocalist.’ And the bandleader said, ‘Can you sing? You don’t look like it.’ I said I’d try and they were doing “Don’t Take Your Love From Me,” which I thought was a beautiful song. I got up there and sang it, and the folks kept looking at me, like ‘Where did he come from?’ My voice was much higher then, ‘cause I was doing classical music. I sounded like a little girl. But he hired me. He asked me if I wanted a job and I said yeah, because I was going to be there three or four months. He said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ and I said, ‘No, I never saw you before in my life.’ He said, ‘I’m Jay McShand,’ as if it meant something to me. It didn’t mean nothin’ to me. I had a batch of music under my arm, and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘Some of my arrangements.’ I had one called “Honeysuckle Rose.” He passed it out and the band played it. He just took to me. I played about three months with him in 1939.

Andrews is especially nostalgic when reminiscing about starting the first integrated big band in Pensacola in the mid-60s. “We had a beautiful band, a beautiful relationship. Joe Occipinti was in it, Roy Russell, Robert Donovan, James Edmund, Charlie Hart. We met one or two ugly things, you know, but the fellows didn’t let it affect them.” A natural evolution of the band was the founding of the Pensacola Jazz Hall of Fame by Andrews, who is also a member. “We organized this thing because nobody was honoring local musicians. They thought it was a joke.” Now well into his 80’s, Andrews enjoys telling his wonderful stories of his colorful musical career, but also making sure those stories—and the lessons behind them—don’t die with his generation. He firmly believes that today’s youth needs people to look up to the way he did. One of Andrews’ heroes was his Uncle Albert Morgan, who played bass with Cab Calloway’s band. A second is Louis Armstrong, because “people said he wasn’t going to make anything of himself, but he fooled everybody. He educated himself and made a big spectacle of himself in the world, not just in New Orleans. I always wanted to have the grit that he had.” A third hero is Count Basie, who “played the piano the way I wanted to play it. He was a genius.” Andrews offers a bit of advice for young musicians: “Get an instrument you can love, take it to a bona fide teacher so you can learn the right way. Study hard, and practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.” “The Professor” is living proof.