Indigo Hour: TJ Hooker-Taylor at the Blue Room

TJ Hooker-Taylor says he didn’t even like the blues until his 25th birthday, when he got the chance to open for his father, Johnnie Taylor, and get paid. That, he told Soul-Blues Music, is “when the Blues hit me.” His father was the voice behind “Who’s Making Love” (1968), “Cheaper to Keep Her” (1973), and “Disco Lady” (1976), and for ten years Hooker-Taylor opened for him at the Thanksgiving Breakfast Dance.

He grew up singing in Kansas City churches and joined his first group, The Young Golden Voices, at ten. At 16 he started an R&B band, The Grand Jury Band, which opened for the Bar-Kays, Cameo, and Slave.

He’s released records of his own since 2005, among them Your Babies Need a Daddy (2009) and Taylorized (2012), and Daddy B. Nice’s Southern Soul RnB guide calls his 2007 track “Player Haters” a “popular chitlin’ circuit ballad.” He played the Denton Blues Festival in September 2025 and headlined The Capitol in Burlington, Iowa, in February 2026. He calls himself “mostly a soul singer,” and the set list follows one rule: “I do my dad’s music and my own songs. Nobody else.”

The Blue Room, 1600 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108. Friday, October 30, 2026, at 5:30 pm. $5 general admission; complimentary for AJM members.