LOS ANGELES — Few artists besides expert jazz and blues singer Ernie Andrews, who died Monday at 94, could claim to owe their big break to the iconic film star Betty Grable, and fewer still could boast that their music teacher was the famed New Orleans jazz trumpeter Bunk Johnson.
Those were two of many memorable moments that the casually assured, velvet-voiced singer Andrews experienced during a lifetime in music. His death in Los Angeles was confirmed in a statement by his family. No cause was given.
"All I've ever known in life is singing. I just sing and sing and sing and sing," Andrews said in "Blues for Central Avenue," a 1986 documentary on the historic Los Angeles music district and his place in it.
