This Weekend at the Blue Room
October 30 – November 2, 2026
Friday’s Indigo Hour is TJ Hooker-Taylor singing his father Johnnie Taylor’s songs and his own; for ten years he opened for his father at the Thanksgiving Breakfast Dance. Later Friday, trumpeter Stan Kessler, a 2021 Kansas Music Hall of Fame inductee who now directs the Kansas City Jazz Academy’s 18th Street Combo, and trombonist Brian Scarborough lead the 8:30 and 10 shows. Mo Betta plays Halloween. On Monday tenor saxophonist Ernest Melton, who joined a jazz program through the American Jazz Museum at 14, leads the jam. Plastic Sax ranked his 2018 trio album fourth among that year’s Kansas City records.
This Weekend’s Lineup
Friday, October 30
Indigo Hour: TJ Hooker-Taylor & the St. Louis Taylorize Band — 5:30 pm ($5; AJM members free)
The Stanton Kessler Experience with Brian Scarborough — 8:30 pm & 10 pm ($10 per show)
Saturday, October 31
Mo Betta — 8:30 pm & 10 pm ($10 per show)
Monday, November 2
Monday Night Jam Session: Ernest Melton — 7 pm ($10; AJM members, musicians & students free)
Indigo Hour: TJ Hooker-Taylor & the St. Louis Taylorize Band — Friday, 5:30 pm
TJ Hooker-Taylor grew up singing in Kansas City churches and joined his first group, The Young Golden Voices, at ten. At 16 he started The Grand Jury Band, which opened for the Bar-Kays, Cameo, and Slave. He’s released records of his own since 2005, among them Taylorized (2012). Last September he played the Denton Blues Festival. He calls himself “mostly a soul singer,” and he says of his sets, “I do my dad’s music and my own songs. Nobody else.” $5; AJM members free.
TJ Hooker-Taylor tickets, 5:30 →
The Stanton Kessler Experience with Brian Scarborough — Friday, 8:30 pm & 10 pm
“Stan Kessler and I are excited to bring our new group to the historic Blue Room,” Brian Scarborough wrote on his calendar. Kessler has played trumpet with Clark Terry, Paquito D’Rivera, and Bobby Watson. Scarborough has played trombone in more than 60 musical theater productions, including the first North American tour of Hadestown, and wrote every tune on his two albums. Plastic Sax has praised them both: Kessler’s 2024 duet album with six Kansas City pianists, Two’s Company, “may be the most valuable release of the year to emerge from Kansas City’s jazz community,” and Scarborough’s Sunflower Song is “one of the most consequential acoustic jazz albums made entirely by Kansas City musicians in recent years.” $10 per show.
The Stanton Kessler Experience with Brian Scarborough tickets →
Mo Betta — Saturday, 8:30 pm & 10 pm
Mo Betta plays the Blue Room at 18th & Vine on Halloween, Saturday, October 31, with shows at 8:30 and 10. $10 per show.
Monday Night Jam Session: Ernest Melton — Monday, 7 pm
Ernest Melton moved to Kansas City from Goldsboro, North Carolina, at 10 and picked up the saxophone that year at Longfellow Academy. In 2013 the museum’s Gerald Dunn told Plastic Sax to go hear him with a youth band at the 18th & Vine Jazz and Blues Festival. “Melton, 17, floored me,” the blog wrote. His trio cut The Time of the Slave Is Over in one day with nothing written out. He’s also the saxophonist on Blue Devil Revival’s 2026 EP, Birth of a Revival. Monday he plays the featured set at 7 with Eric Kaplan on piano, Sebastian Arias on bass, and Jaylen Ward on drums; after that, anyone who signed up at the door can sit in. $10; AJM members, musicians, and students free.
See you at the Blue Room.
The Blue Room · 1600 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108
Full calendar and tickets: americanjazzmuseum.org/blue-room