KCRW’s acclaimed music documentary podcast, Lost Notes, returns for its fourth season. Co-hosts Novena Carmel (KCRW) and Michael Barnes (KCRW / KPFK / Artform Radio) guide you through eight wildly different and deeply human stories, each set against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of LA’s soul and R&B scene of the 1950s-1970s. Support KCRW’s original programming like Lost Notes by donating or becoming a member.
Lost Notes examines the legacy of Reggie Andrews, a world-class musician, producer, and mentor who changed the lives of countless young musicians in South LA.
Andrews spent more than four decades in the LAUSD school system, teaching and mentoring generations of notable musicians: Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, Cameron Graves, Ronald Bruner Jr. and his brother Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, Patrice Rushen, Gerald Albright, Ndugu Chancler, Rickey Minor, The Pharcyde, Syd from the Internet, Tyrese Gibson, and hundreds more – taking them from South LA to the Hollywood Bowl stage and far beyond.
If Andrews had “just” been an educator, his legacy would have been secure. But he was also a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and producer. He worked in artist development for multiple labels, and was a hit-making writer, especially for the Dazz Band. Reggie Andrews’ impact on the past half-century of music coming out of Los Angeles is almost immeasurable.
But he did consider it his life’s mission to be an educator, even though he was so much more than that to his students – many of whom thought of him like a father.
In this episode of Lost Notes, Novena and Michael will school you on the life and legacy of Joseph Reginald Andrews.
Reggie Andrews in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Andrews family.
Novena Carmel
It’s an overcast afternoon at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday, the 14th of June, 1997. The 19th Annual Playboy Jazz Festival is kicking off, and the sold-out crowd of 18,000 people is slowly filtering in to catch headliners like Chaka Khan, John Lee Hooker, and Grover Washington, Jr. Onstage to open the proceedings is an 18-piece group of local kids called the LA Multi-School Jazz Band. And at this exact moment, a ninth-grade alto sax player named Kamasi Washington is sweating his way through a solo he was not expecting to play.
Michael Barnes
The Multi-School Jazz Band is widely considered to be the cream of the crop from LA’s high-schools. So Kamasi has definitely earned his place onstage … but this solo is a definite curveball for a kid who always thought of himself as more of an ensemble player, and the band’s director, Reggie Andrews, hadn’t given Kamasi any indications to the contrary – that is, until Reggie pointed at him live onstage in front of nearly 20,000 people.
Novena Carmel
Washington went home from the Bowl that night with a mantra: I never want to feel like this again. He would recall this afternoon for years to come as the precise moment when he decided to get serious about his instrument. He spent that whole summer cloistered in his room, practicing day and night. And when he returned to Hamilton High in the fall, his musicianship had transformed completely.
Michael Barnes
But if the stakes seemed high that day at the Bowl, Reggie Andrews knew that the stakes were even higher for these kids at home. By then, he had been a music teacher at Alain Leroy Locke High School in Watts for nearly two decades. He had seen the consequences for young people who lacked support, opportunity, and a sense of possibility. And he made it his lifelong mission to elevate the kids in his community by molding their talents, before, during & after school.
Novena Carmel
But Reggie’s impact on these kids wasn’t just limited to the band room. To many of them, he was a mentor, a father figure, a man who offered a vision of a life lived with integrity … and someone who provided his students with the emotional and even the material support to find that path for themselves. Reggie was so ingrained in their lives that in the halls of Locke High, kids would call him “Daddy” or “Paw Paw.” That sense of community, almost like a true family connection, was an important part of what inspired Reggie’s work at Locke, and the other schools he taught at during his career.
Michael Barnes
Reggie knew firsthand about the power and potential of a great teacher and mentor, because, as a young man, he had one himself: the same man who eventually brought him in to teach at Locke, Donald Dustin. Don Dustin began teaching music at Samuel Gompers Junior High in 1960, halfway through Reggie’s first year at the school. Reggie had grown up in a musical family – his father had sung in a big band, and his mother and older sister both played piano, as did Reggie growing up. But this was his first experience with formal musical education.
Novena Carmel
Even at twelve years old, Reggie struck Don Dustin as a “quiet and intense” kid, with the aura of a natural leader. While he was a student, Reggie single-handedly organized the school’s first Jazz Combo. Dustin remembers Reggie getting his friends together in the band room after school to jam, improvise, and hash out arrangements. For Don Dustin, having this window into Reggie’s process of discovery at that age was tremendously exciting. And Dustin told us that even as a young teen, Reggie had an uncanny ability to mentor his fellow students. It’s no surprise that Reggie quickly took the first chair position in the Gompers Band and Orchestra, and held it until he graduated from junior high in 1963.
Don Dustin and Reggie Andrews with the Gompers Band and Orchestra, February 1963. Photo courtesy of LA Sentinel archives.
Michael Barnes
A photo in the LA Sentinel that year shows Reggie and Don Dustin together at the conductors’ podium, posing for the camera with a piece of open sheet music. The caption notes that Reggie conducted the Band and Orchestra at his own graduation ceremony…and it concludes by saying that “Andrews is interested in music as a career, and plans to major in music in high school and college.”
Novena Carmel
Over the next few years, Reggie would plant the seeds for his future, both as a musician and an educator. In a scholarship application letter, Andrews expressed his intentions clearly, writing: “My ambition in life is to teach music on the junior high level and be an arranger-composer, and hope later to enter the field of sound production.”
Reggie Andrews’ graduation portrait from Washington High School, 1965. Photo courtesy of Andrews family.
Michael Barnes
He graduated from Washington High a year early, in 1965. By 1967, he’d put together a group, the Reggie Andrews Octet, which played weekends at the Tropicana in South LA: the self-proclaimed “Birdland of the West Coast.” In the meantime, he started his undergraduate work in music education at Pepperdine College. He also taught clarinet on the side, and played piano and organ for the Bel-Vue Presbyterian Church’s Westminster Youth Fellowship. And while all of these activities gave Reggie some forward momentum, a phone call from his mentor Don Dustin put him on a path that would change countless futures – not merely his own.
Novena Carmel
In September of 1967, the South LA neighborhood of Watts became home to Alain Leroy Locke Senior High School. The school was named after the so-called “Dean of the Harlem Renaissance.” It was the first high school to be built in South LA since Fremont High opened its doors in 1924. To lead its new music department, Locke hired Don Dustin – and also Frank Harris, a former GI who held a music degree from the historically black Southern University and A&M College in Louisiana. Both men also split their time at Gompers, in addition to their duties at Locke.
Michael Barnes
Dustin felt that Locke also needed someone with youth, fresh ideas and an ear to ground musically – and he thought back to watching Reggie in those after-hours jam sessions, back when he was his student at Gompers. Reggie was a gifted musician, a natural leader, and a native son of Watts. And if anyone had the potential to become a master teacher, it was Reggie Andrews.
Novena Carmel
And Reggie certainly understood the assignment ahead of him. He could not only draw on his experiences as a student, but also as a young Black man studying music education – which still has problems of representation to this day. Reggie had already noticed that there were no teachers like him in the school system – and certainly no one teaching contemporary music derived from the Black diaspora. In this moment, Reggie asked himself a question: “Do I want to try to be Herbie Hancock, or do I want to try to create Herbie Hancocks?” So, in late 1968, Reggie accepted Don Dustin’s offer to create Locke’s first jazz ensemble as an after-school program, thanks to funding by the Rockefeller Foundation. Reggie taught part-time at Locke until earning his BA in Music Education and Music Theory from Pepperdine the following year in 1969.
Michael Barnes
And as his teaching career was beginning at Locke, his recording career began to take off as well. In 1969, his group, the Reggie Andrews Octet, picked up a recording contract with a producer named Harry Mitchell, who had seen them in action at the Tropicana. Reggie renamed the group Reggie Andrews and the Fellowship, and their album, Mystic Beauty, was released on Mitchell’s H.M.E. label later that year. The album didn’t make much of a splash when it was released, but these days … original copies sell for thousands of dollars.
Novena Carmel
Shortly after releasing Mystic Beauty, Reggie got a call from the Latin jazz percussionist Willie Bobo, who had recently arrived in Los Angeles and was putting together a group, which became Wille Bobo and the Bo-Gents. Produced by music legend Clarence Avant, their 1971 album Do What You Want To Do featured Reggie on electric piano, and also had three of his compositions, including the title track, another one called “Never You Mind,” and the stone-cold Latin soul-jazz classic, “Broasted or Fried.”
Michael Barnes
Seven nights a week, Reggie was playing shows with Bobo and the Bo-Gents … and by day, five days a week, he taught classes at Locke, including classes on Music Theory and a survey course called World of Music. And when the Rockefeller money dried up for the after-school program, Reggie – still in his early 20s at this point – kept it going on his own dime, under the name Msingi Jazz Workshop.
Novena Carmel
Taking its name from the Swahili word for “roots” or “foundation,” Msingi was where Reggie’s vision of what he could do as an educator really began to take shape. Don Dustin recalls that he’d sometimes sneak into the rehearsal room to hear Reggie talking with the kids about life matters. It was here that Reggie began developing the sayings he’d become famous for later on, including: “Luck is opportunity meets preparation.”
Michael Barnes
“Treat people better than they treat you.”
Novena Carmel
“Either give your money or your time, or shut up.”
Michael Barnes
“There are three types of people: Some make things happen. Some watch things happen. And some wonder what happened.”
Reggie Andrews in the 1971 Locke High yearbook. Photo courtesy of Locke College Preparatory Academy archives.
Novena Carmel
As Reggie was coming into his own as a teacher, Locke’s music program was starting to attract some of LA’s finest young talent. One such student was Patrice Rushen. Rushen played flute in the already-legendary Locke Saints Marching Band and joined Msingi Workshop as a pianist. Of this time, Rushen later said: "The high school experiences opened the door for me to see what was possible. There was very clear consciousness towards a positive identity. If you were lucky enough to find your passion, you could learn a lot."
Michael Barnes
People classified Msingi as a “jazz band,” but Reggie rejected that label. He saw the whole galaxy of music made by the Black diaspora as one unified tradition … and Msingi had a forward-thinking repertoire which refused to draw hard lines between genres. It was also designed to give the kids real-world experience in the life of a musician. Rushen remembers that Bandleader and educator Gerald Wilson would send them stuff to play that she says was “way over our heads, but the idea was for us to see the possibilities. That music pushed us.”
Novena Carmel
Msingi Workshop played out in the community, at clubs and at festivals. Reggie also took them out to clubs on Friday nights to see legends like Cannonball Adderley, Freddie Hubbard, and even Herbie Hancock – who was one of many famous musicians who also found their way into Reggie’s classroom to talk about life in the profession, or even to sit in with the students and jam. One evening in particular, there was a group that Reggie knew was looking for a place to set up and rehearse after hours. Reggie convinced a few students to stay after in the school’s auditorium and lend a hand. That group turned out to be Earth, Wind and Fire – and they even came back to play Rushen’s senior prom.
Novena Carmel
And while Reggie’s “Locke family” was growing, in both size and stature, he started his own family at home. In 1971, he met Luana Braud, who had three young daughters: Renon, Marla, and Dominique. And from day one, Reggie raised the girls as his own. Dominique described the girls’ childhood with Reggie as “a magical adventure. He poured his heart into making us happy. Even on our birthdays, he allowed us to stay home from school – and he’s a teacher!”
Michael Barnes
By the end of 1971, Msingi Workshop had become a powerful live ensemble. In addition to Patrice Rushen, the group also included saxophonist Gerald Albright; trumpet player Ray Brown, who went on to join Earth, Wind & Fire; saxophonist Daniel LeMelle, who played with Rick James, Teena Marie, and DeBarge; and another sax player, Rickey Washington – also known today as Kamasi’s dad. Of this time, Reggie wrote: “The school year 1971-1972 will really be a year hard to duplicate or surpass musically.”
Novena Carmel
Reggie felt so strongly about the group’s excellence that he hired a mobile recording studio to capture their Senior Farewell Concert, held in the Locke High auditorium on May 25, 1972. The recording from that show was pressed as an album to raise money for the group’s trip to the All-High School Festival that June in Monterey. The album contained a mix of covers and originals by Reggie, Patrice, and others – and it also contained a version of Gerald Wilson’s “Viva Tirado,” which we talked about at length earlier in the season.
Michael Barnes
Shortly after the Monterey trip, Msingi Workshop competed in the LA Parks and Recreation Department’s annual Battle of the Bands, which took place at the Hollywood Bowl on June 23rd. The judges that year included the LA Times’ jazz critic and author of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, Leonard Feather; sax player Tom Scott; and the man himself, bandleader & educator, Gerald Wilson. Msingi took home the award for Top Stage Band, as well as the Sweepstakes Award for earning the highest vote total from the judges. And Patrice Rushen scored a Best Instrumentalist award alongside her Msingi bandmate, Dathan Dedman. And remember, they’re just teenagers at this point.
Msingi Workshop in the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival program, including Patrice Rushen (center). Photo courtesy of Monterey Jazz Festival archives.
Novena Carmel
At the end of that summer, Rushen went off to USC to study Music Education and Piano Performance. But she returned to the fold one last time for the group’s appearance at the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival, where they played the Sunday Afternoon Concert. There, while at Monterey, Rushen met veteran record producer Orrin Keepnews, who had worked with Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, and McCoy Tyner, among others. Keepnews introduced Rushen to some people at jazz label Prestige Records … for whom Patrice then released Prelusion, her debut album – produced by Reggie Andrews.
Michael Barnes
And as members of Reggie’s “Locke Family” started to find success away from the school, Reggie faced something that every teacher encounters at some point in their career: burnout. Stepping away from teaching at Locke, Reggie hoped to continue his own studies at Howard University under trumpet player Donald Byrd. But it turned out that Byrd had just left Howard for Los Angeles, where – as we told you in a previous episode – he was about to start working with Larry and Fonce Mizell. So Reggie chose to stay closer to home, pursuing a Masters degree at the university where I proudly currently teach: Cal State Long Beach.
Novena Carmel
During his time away from Locke, all kinds of connections came together for Reggie – and seemingly all at once. In 1972, Reggie produced an album for the Brazilian composer Moacir Santos on Blue Note Records. And he ended up working with Donald Byrd and the Mizell brothers as an “electronics consultant” on their breakthrough collaboration, Black Byrd. The Mizells brought Reggie in again for their next two projects, Byrd’s album Street Lady and Bobbi Humphrey’s Blacks and Blues. And, given his job title, it’s quite possible that Reggie had some influence on the trademark synthesizer textures of those classic Mizell albums.
Michael Barnes
Reggie also co-founded a new group of his own with trumpet player Oscar Brashier, a session guy from Chicago who’d played with Earth, Wind & Fire and recently had moved to LA. Oscar told Reggie he was looking for an outlet for his musical ideas that didn’t fit into his “side man” gigs. So together they put together the Ujima Ensemble, which included George Bohannon on trombone and Ernie Watts on tenor sax. The group’s first rhythm section also featured one of Reggie’s former Locke students: a drummer by the name of Leon “Ndugu” Chancler. The group played a series of high-profile gigs around town, including one with the reformed Gerald Wilson Orchestra in 1973, and a star-studded gig at the Shrine Auditorium alongside The Mizells, Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey, and the Blackbyrds in 1974.
Print ad for the Ujima Ensemble at the Lighthouse Cafe, July 1973.
Novena Carmel
And 1974 also saw Reggie return to teaching, but he didn't return to Locke – at least, not right away. Instead, he took a gig at John C. Fremont High, a few miles north of Locke. There he worked with three new groups: the Tarabu Ensemble, a big band similar to Msingi Workshop; a smaller band called Funktion (with a K!); and a theater group called the Royal Ebony Players’ Guild, whose shows featured original music written by Reggie.
Michael Barnes
As was the case back with Msingi Workshop at Locke, there was no real money in the school system to fund Reggie’s ambitious ideas. So, he did what he had done before: He called up a few famous friends to donate their time and talents to raise money for his kids. He put on three different benefit concerts for the school in 1976, including acts like Gerald Wilson, Gary Bartz, and Syreeta Wright – as well as a new group called Karma, which turned out to be the Ujima Ensemble, now with a new rhythm section. The group signed to A&M Records and put out its debut album, Celebration, before the end of the year … and while the album largely got mixed reviews, the LA Times dug it, calling it “a sophisticated mesh of funk, improvisation and foresight.”
Novena Carmel
Taking another page from Msingi Workshop, Reggie put together two different albums with the Fremont High bands – in 1976, From Nothing To Something; and in 1977, Visions Of Freedom. They featured recordings by the Tarabu Ensemble and Funktion, plus recordings of a pair of musicals by the Royal Ebony Players. In the notes to the first record, Reggie wrote: “This record is a first and documented proof for Fremont High Performing Arts Department’s struggling efforts. Let it be a precedent and a symbol of Black pride for aspiring artists and craftsmen [that] come from this community and those surrounding.”
A press notice in the LA Sentinel for a Royal Ebony Players production in 1976. Photo courtesy of LA Sentinel archives.
Michael Barnes
Reggie returned to Locke the following year in 1978. And when he did, twelve of the young musicians he’d been mentoring at Fremont followed him there … although, there were also a number of talented new students waiting for him as well.
Rastine Calhoun (top R) in the saxophone division of the Locke Saints Marching Band, 1979. Photo courtesy of Locke College Preparatory Academy archives.
Novena Carmel
Rastine Calhoun was already a senior at Locke by the time Reggie came back. But he describes learning from Reggie as a “quantum leap” in his education. Locke’s music program had made Calhoun into an accomplished musician, but Reggie showed him what it meant to be a professional. He taught them that success is as much about who you know as it is about what you know. Through Reggie, his students had access to a door that was all but invisible to kids at other schools – although he always insisted that it was up to them to walk through that door.
Gompers and Locke music departments’ joint teaching schedule, 1979.
Michael Barnes
Now that he was back at Locke, Reggie more or less picked up where he left off, taking students to club gigs and inviting professional musicians into his classes. He also resumed work with Msingi Workshop, as well as directing a group called the Locke High School Production Band. Both groups were represented on the final Locke High release, an ambitious double LP titled Opus One.
Novena Carmel
The Production Band, in particular, showed out on this double LP. They’re represented by eleven cuts that run the gamut from party funk, to simmering ballads, to even some Latin-inflected soul. The kids’ practiced musicianship and raw enthusiasm positively drips out of the speakers. But Rastine recalls that Reggie never pitched the kids on making a recording. Other instructors might have worked their students into a fever pitch of anticipation leading up to the recording date. But Rastine says Reggie was more strategic. The process of making the album wasn’t set up as some impossible Olympian goal. It was literally a record of the bands, as they were, in that moment.
Michael Barnes
The Locke Saints album has since become a highly sought-after collectors’ item – yet another record associated with Reggie Andrews that sells for thousands of dollars in the present day. World-renowned DJ, producer, and collector Cut Chemist says that while there are other high-school albums that are sought after, such as those from the Kashmere Stage Band out of Texas, the records connected with Reggie have a diversity of styles, all exceptionally performed, that is exceedingly rare on high-school private press records … a comment that speaks to the timeless quality of what Reggie, and his students, were able to achieve.
Novena Carmel
As the seventies gave way to the eighties, Reggie was becoming more in-demand as a producer and arranger. His production work on Patrice Rushen’s first five albums had moved her closer and closer to the mainstream … and as a result, his stock in the industry was high. In 1980, Reggie signed a deal with Motown to develop new acts, and to serve as an arranger and producer for in-house projects. That same year, he got a phone call from Lee Young, the A&R Director for Motown. Young was working with a new Motown signing: a group from Ohio called the Dazz Band.
Michael Barnes
The group was preparing to record its debut album for Motown, and Young felt that the Dazz Band might benefit from Reggie’s producing & arranging chops. So the label put Reggie on a flight to Cleveland, where he met up with the group’s leader, Bobby Harris. The two men bonded more or less right away and although the younger members of the group had their misgivings about Reggie’s role in the process, they eventually came to respect his even-handed approach to honing the Dazz Band’s sound.
Novena Carmel
Reggie and the Dazz Band’s first two albums together – 1980’s Invitation to Love and Let the Music Play from 1981 – did not produce the kind of success Motown expected. The Dazz Band was in danger of being dropped unless they could deliver a hit. But Reggie had a secret weapon up his sleeve: his former student, Leon “Ndugu” Chancler. By now, Reggie and Ndugu had a working relationship stretching back to the late ‘60s. And they had developed a kind of musical telepathy with one another. So when the Dazz Band was in need of a hit, the two men went to work.
Michael Barnes
Their initial idea was that the track should be written as a new kind of dance. They cycled through a number of ideas before Reggie finally landed on one that seemed to fit. The pair then brought two drum machines to the studio – a Linndrum LM-1 and a Roland TR-808 – and layered them for a percolating groove. The song’s infectious bassline came from a MiniMoog synthesizer, and the Dazz Band themselves provided the warm-blooded funk for the song: “Let It Whip.”
Novena Carmel
Now, you may remember, in our Ruth Dolphin episode, how Ruth’s son Erroll had a sixth sense about the hit-making potential of the Don Julian & the Larks’ song, “The Jerk.” Well, it turns out Reggie had his own little taste-maker at home – his daughter Nia, who was not even two at the time. Whenever they’d play back “Let it Whip” in the studio, Nia would “wiggle like nobody’s business,” she says … and based on her reaction, Reggie knew that it would be a hit.
Michael Barnes
“Let it Whip” ultimately peaked at #5 in the Hot 100 in July of 1982. The song spent five weeks at the top of the R&B charts. And the following year, the Dazz Band took home a Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. The song’s enduring popularity even led to it going viral in 2023 on TikTok, giving birth to the Whip It Challenge.
Novena Carmel
Reggie and Ndugu continued to write songs for the band, and Reggie produced all of the band’s albums until 1984 – a period that included two other hits, “Joystick” and “Let It All Blow.” In 1985, the band dedicated their album, Hotspot, to him. Reflecting on the band’s time with Reggie, Bobby Harris said that he was lucky to go to “five years of Reggie college” from 1980 to 1985. He says Reggie taught him how to have patience; how to keep the studio atmosphere light; and how to engage more constructively with his bandmates. And even after Reggie moved on from the Dazz Band, he and Harris would still talk regularly on matters of life and music.
Michael Barnes
As Reggie was enjoying commercial success in the early part of the 1980s, the situation back home in South LA reflected a much harsher reality. The 1980s saw the rise of a new drug epidemic, along with unprecedented levels of street violence; draconian policies from politicians on both sides of the aisle in the name of a “War On Drugs”; the militarization of the LAPD and police departments around the country; and a wave of mass incarceration – the consequences of which both Los Angeles, and our nation, are still contending with in the present day.
Novena Carmel
And while funding for arts programs had always been much less than it needed to be, beginning in the 1980s, public school funding for the arts was decimated across the board. The program at Locke was no exception. Both of Reggie’s early mentors, Don Dustin and Frank Harris, had left Locke by 1983. And the music program there endured wave after wave of budget cuts throughout the decade. But through it all, Reggie remained committed to the youth of South LA. While he remained connected to Locke, he began expanding his base of operations to include studios - and students - from outside the school’s ecosystem.
Michael Barnes
One of his first ventures was based out of a multi-unit residential property he’d bought at the corner of La Cienega Boulevard and Hill Street. He’d gotten some seed money from A&M Records to set up a talent incubator and drop-in studio for developing artists in South LA. Reggie named it SCU – for South Central Unit.
Novena Carmel
SCU was more or less just an apartment in the building which Reggie had tricked out with a multi-track recording studio. Reggie’s daughter Nia remembers that he was always on top of the latest advances in musical technology … so, even though a lot of the instruments at SCU were hand-me-downs, they were still revelatory tools in the hands of the teens and twenty-somethings that shared time in the studio.
Michael Barnes
Juan Manuel Martinez-Luis was one of Reggie’s most eager students at Locke. His dad was an Afro-Cuban musician and bandleader, and he’d followed in his footsteps, becoming particularly adept at piano. But he’d had his brain rewired by the golden age of hip-hop … and once his dad gave him a drum machine as a young teen, he started producing beats in his bedroom. Reggie took a shine to Juan, and invited him into SCU, where he taught him the ins and outs of the Akai MPC60 sampler.
Novena Carmel
At SCU, Juan -- who went by John to most folks -- also met another one of Reggie’s protégés, a teenager named John “LA Jay” Barnes. The two boys began working on R&B tracks strongly influenced by the “new jack swing” sound of the day. Martinez took on the name J-Swift for his production work, and before long, they were cutting tracks for the Bell Biv DeVoe-aligned dance crew Str8-Ahead and Keisha Jackson, among others.
Michael Barnes
But J-Swift was feeling pulled to hip-hop, and as it happens, Reggie had just given him the keys to the kingdom: a garage on the premises of SCU where Reggie stored thousands of his vintage records. Around the same time, some guys in a dance crew who called themselves Two For Two walked into SCU. They’d been mentored by some of LA’s most well-connected dancers, including Toni Basil and Rosie Perez, and had recently appeared on the popular TV sketch show, In Living Color. With the addition of a rapper named Derrick Stewart, aka Fatlip, this collective took on the name The Pharcyde. And using that one sampler and Reggie’s prodigious collection of vinyl, J-Swift laid the musical foundation for the material that would make up their debut album, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde.
Novena Carmel
As we move into the 1990s, musician and producer Terrace Martin was another young person whose life was changed through meeting Reggie Andrews. After Terrace ran into trouble with the law at his high school, the school’s counselor, Ron Wilkins, called upon his friend Reggie to help sort the young man out.
Michael Barnes
Reggie bailed Terrace out of jail, sight unseen, and drove him home to speak with Terrace’s mom. Terrace, then a tenth-grader, came from a family of musicians, and had shown some promise on the alto saxophone. Reggie told Terrace’s mom that, although he couldn’t make any promises, he could help Terrace channel his energy in a different direction … if Terrace wanted to. Terrace was at a crossroads between choosing the street life or the path of a musician – and because he’d seen firsthand, in his own family, the struggles that musicians went through, he had little faith in that path.
Novena Carmel
But Reggie took him under his wing – and not just as a student. He often made Terrace his ride-along buddy for whatever errands he was running around town. Reggie’s gift was finding the wavelength of every kid he encountered, And soon enough, he was teaching Terrace not just about the intrinsic beauty and value of music, but also the nuts-and-bolts practicalities of how to make a business of music. He taught him how to survive, not just as a working musician, but in life itself – reminding him to always make it home to wake up another day.
Michael Barnes
These life lessons Reggie was giving to Terrace and others might have been a part of his practice perhaps from the beginning. But it was amplified in the 1990s with this new generation of kids, who were arguably dealing with higher social stakes than ever before. If his students didn’t have access to a car, he’d drive them to and from rehearsals. If a kid was food insecure, or had parents who worked multiple jobs, he’d invite them over to eat with his own family. As Terrace says: “He provided options in a young Black kid’s brain where I didn’t even think there were options. And as human beings, options are a blessing…Reggie is bigger than music.”
Terrace Martin at 16 years old, with jazz legend Billy Higgins and Reggie. Photo courtesy of Terrace Martin.
Novena Carmel
By this time, Reggie’s daughter Nia had entered Locke as a student in her own right. And she describes the atmosphere in the hallways as a kind of “‘hood version” of the TV Show & Film, Fame: filled with what she called a “hyper-creative, close-knit community of creators.” But Reggie was focused on finding a way to build that sense of community outside of what he had created at Locke. For his next project – all while still running the music program at Locke, and providing opportunities through SCU – Reggie put up his own time and money to create a new program that would bring the city’s best young musicians under one roof.
Michael Barnes
And those kids weren’t that hard to find. Reggie's former student Rickey Washington’s kid Kamasi had recently taken up the sax. Rickey's occasional bandmate Ronald Bruner had two boys who were showing musical promise: his drumming son, Ronald Bruner, Jr., and bassist Stephen Lee Bruner, who would later take the stage name Thundercat. Kamasi studied at Alexander Hamilton High alongside pianist Cameron Graves and bassist Miles Mosley. Ryan Porter was at George Washington Prep High. And, of course, Terrace Martin was also in the mix. But the glue that held them all together was Reggie Andrews, and out of this soon-to-be-legendary crew of kids, he created the Multi-School Jazz Band.
Novena Carmel
On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Reggie would make the rounds to the high schools around town. And he’d fill his maroon Mercury Villager minivan with as many kids and instruments as it would fit. They’d rehearse in the band room at Locke High from 5 to 7 PM, and then he’d drive all those kids home. He did this week after week, month after month, season after season. The Multi-School Jazz Band did as Reggie’s groups had always done, gigging around town and taking on larger showcases … like Kamasi’s infamous bow at the Hollywood Bowl in 1997 that we mentioned at the start of the show.
Michael Barnes
Reggie may have known that this might be his last great ensemble – so, as he’d done before, he had the impulse to capture some of their greatness on tape. But the days of those private-press high-school LPs were long gone. Plus, these kids weren’t just from Locke – they were dispersed all over the city. But, Reggie being Reggie, he still found a way to get them on record … and the Multi-School Jazz Band ended up at Cherokee Studios in the fall of 1999 to record a handful of musical interludes for My Christmas Album: a holiday-themed CD issued that year on MCA Records that also featured tracks from Mary J. Blige, KC & Jojo, and Patti LaBelle. Though their contribution is brief, with each interlude lasting less than a minute, it was a strong sign of what would be coming from these players in the future.
Novena Carmel
The cohesion that Reggie fostered among the kids in the Multi-School Band led them to form groups of their own – like the Young Jazz Giants, featuring the Bruner brothers, Kamasi, and Cameron Graves. And, later, the West Coast Get Down: a much larger collective that also included Miles Mosley, Ryan Porter, Terrace Martin, Tony Austin, Brandon Coleman, and Patrice Quinn. Even today, these musicians still work together in countless combinations and permutations, among each other and with artists like Robert Glasper, Flying Lotus, Snoop Dogg, and Kendrick Lamar.
Novena Carmel
Reggie retired from Locke in 2010, after forty years of service to his community – although, in typical Reggie style, he continued to teach on an informal basis for a few more years. In 2015, Locke High - now known as the Locke College Preparatory Academy - renamed its music facility after Reggie, and his two mentors who worked there at its founding, as the Dustin-Harris-Andrews Building.
Andrews, Harris, and Dustin at the dedication ceremony for the music building at Locke renamed in their honor, November 2015. Photo courtesy Alain Leroy Locke High School Heritage.
Michael Barnes
In a letter he wrote to his community at his retirement celebration, he was insistent that the event be held in Watts: an area that “gets demonized so often.” He went on to say: “I believe, until we as a people help improve Watts and other urban areas similar to Watts – You know what I’m speaking of, “the hoods of America.” These are the anchors that are slowing our rise as a people. I never left my hood.”
Novena Carmel
Reggie Andrews died on June 23, 2022, at 74 years old. He never gave up on Watts. He always had love for his community. In the words of his daughter, Nia: “Love was his community.”
Michael Barnes
Love was his community … Such a remarkable life. You know, Novena, while Reggie was the perfect way to cap this season of Lost Notes, I almost feel like we could have done a whole season just on him. I mean … when you think of the list of people whose lives were fundamentally changed by coming into contact with Reggie Andrews? Beyond even the long list of artists we’ve mentioned here, you truly understand how even just one dedicated individual can change people’s lives for the better.
Novena Carmel
So so true … Just as Terrace Martin told us when we talked to him about Reggie, “Reggie Andrews was bigger than music…this man saved lives!”
And what a ripple effect he created! Some of our favorite artists who continue to make music today and change our lives found their roots with Reggie.
Michael Barnes
Absolutely, and those ripples will be going for a long time. But near the end of his career, during an interview in 2012, Andrews said the following: “I don’t take credit for any of my former students…I just kept the doors open, created an environment for them to grow and to know each other.”
Novena Carmel
So beautiful … So selfless and humble, right to the end. Perhaps the best way to end this episode is with one more song from Reggie, from way back at the start of his career in 1971. From his days with Willie Bobo and the Bo-Gents, the song that our episode takes its title from: “Do What You Want To Do.”
Michael Barnes
A perfect choice, and something that almost feels like a personal philosophy: “Do what YOU want to do,” something that he made possible for countless people during that 40-plus-year career as an educator, mentor, musician, and father.
Reggie Andrews fans: Stay tuned for our next episode, which will feature a pair of in-depth original interviews about Reggie with his daughter Nia Andrews, as well as musician-producer Terrace Martin.
Lost Notes is a KCRW Original Production. It’s made by Michael Barnes, Ashlea Brown, Novena Carmel, Melissa Dueñas, and Myke Dodge Weiskopf. Special thanks to Gina Delvac, Jennifer Ferro, Katie Gilchrest, Ray Guarna, Nathalie Hill, Anne Litt, Phil Richards, Arnie Seipel, Desmond Taylor, and Anthony Valadez.
Extra-special thanks to Nick Attaway, Cut Chemist, Ariana Morgenstern, Gina Harris, Mathieu Schreyer, and Samantha Whitehead.
Extra-extra-special thanks to our interviewees, who generously shared their thoughts, reflections, and memories of Reggie: Nia Andrews, Rastine Calhoun, Donald Dustin, Bobby Harris, Terrace Martin, Rickey Minor, and Tony White.
MORE:
Lost Notes S4 - Ep 7: Dear Ruth: How Ruth Dolphin (Re-)Built A Musical Empire
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 6: Go with the Flow: Community, Virality, and the Politics of Dancing
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 5: Places & Spaces: The Mizell Brothers’ LA Alchemy
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 4: Viva Tirado: The South/East LA Connection
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 3: My Lady’s Frustration: How Fela Kuti Found Afrobeat in LA
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 2: Mojo on Trial: The Seedy, Greedy World of Ruth Christie
Lost Notes S4 - Ep. 1: Tainted Love: Gloria Jones and the Half-Life of a Hit