Ernie Andrews: Life on Eventful Philip Morris Tour

“It’s hard to adjust,” Ernie Andrews said.

Just last month, the veteran Los Angeles-based jazz, pop and blues singer returned home after a three-month tour of five continents as featured vocalist with the 18-man ensemble billed as Gene Harris and the Philip Morris Superband.

As Andrews made clear, after working under the extraordinary conditions that prevailed during that tour, anything would seem anticlimactic. “It was the most luxurious situation imaginable--the sky was the limit when it came to treating us right,” he said.

Not that he is by any means scuffling for jobs--he just played to good crowds at Marla’s Memory Lane. On Feb. 10, he will sing in Exposition Park as part of the “Black Esthetic” presentation of the Afro-American Museum. The next day he heads for Washington, where he will address the students at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and will later share a concert at Kennedy Center with Marlena Shaw.

Good gigs all, but somehow not the same as earning standing ovations in Cairo, Ankara, Morocco, Moscow, Milan, Manila, Melbourne and Perth. (The band played only one domestic date, a break-in session at New York’s Town Hall, which was recorded for Concord Jazz.)

For economic reasons, a tour of this kind would have been impossible in the United States. “We were in four- and five-star hotels everywhere,” Andrews said. “In some cities we’d stay several days and only play one or two concerts, but our days off cost us almost nothing; they paid for our hotels.” The sponsors also arranged for several of the musicians’ wives to fly over for part of the tour.

“We ate well and slept well, we lived royally; so there were no animosities,” Andrews said. “On an Italian date, we had three band buses--one for the sound crew, one for the smoking musicians and another for the nonsmokers.” (An ironic touch, given the cigarette sponsorship.)

By sheer chance, the band--which ranges in age from 26-year-old trombone virtuoso James Morrison from Australia along with the 74-year-old trumpeter Harry (Sweets) Edison--managed to stay just ahead of the dramatic political events that were taking place in Eastern Europe.

“We were at the Jazz Festival in West Berlin, with Wynton Marsalis and Take 6; the next day we played East Berlin, where the people wouldn’t let us off the stage,” Andrews said. “Two days later we heard the Wall had come down! In Manila we stayed at the same hotel where they had all the problems, but we were out of there three days before the coup started.

“Poland was wonderful. We were each given a couple of thousand dollars of their money to spend--not that there was much to buy.

“Russia was a bit of a culture shock at first, but the enthusiasm was so great that fans were offering $150, as much as most of them earn in a month, for a ticket. We were invited over to the Composers’ Union Building, where after lunch several Russian musicians played with some of our guys.”

In a sense the tour with Harris completed a full circle, since Andrews first came to international prominence as a band vocalist in the 1950s and ‘60s, with the orchestra of the late Harry James. Born in 1927 in Philadelphia, Andrews has lived in Los Angeles since his late teens and began his recording career in the 1940s. Though he now works locally mainly as a single, he gigged and recorded during most of the 1980s with the Frank Capp/Nat Pierce Juggernaut big band.

Most of the musicians are home now: about half in New York, James Moody in San Diego, bassist Ray Brown in Los Angeles, guitarist Herb Ellis in Fairfield Bay, Ark., and pianist-leader Gene Harris in Boise, Ida., where for the previous decade he had lived quietly and in relative obscurity as musical director for a local hotel.

Evidently that obscurity is not destined to last. From Boise, Harris said: “It looks as though I’m on call with Philip Morris. They helped arrange for me to play a performance in Washington with President Bush in the audience, Jan. 22 at the Willard Hotel, for the Libertad organization, with Charlton Heston emceeing.

“As for the tour, the news is promising. I can’t give out the details, but I haven’t done my last tour yet. Meanwhile some of the best videos out of a whole bunch that were taken while we were traveling will be assembled for public television in the States.”

Joanne Jimenez, a representative of the Bridge Agency which contracted the tour, said plans are to reorganize the band with many of the same musicians for a fall tour. “Next time, instead of a single U.S. date, we expect to put on two or three concerts in this country, probably including runs in Los Angeles,” Jimenez said.

This is heartening news for the musicians as well. Andrews summed it up: “There just isn’t anything to match the blessings of those conditions for an artist. You praise the Lord that you’re out there having a ball, pleasing those great audiences in big halls, and being kept in comfort. You really feel at peace with yourself.”

Ratings for two record reviews were incorrect last week. Mike Fahn’s “Steppin’ Out” should receive 4 1/2 stars and “Gene Harris and the Philip Morris Superband” should rate four stars.