About this Event
In 2013 the American Jazz Museum's Gerald Dunn told Plastic Sax to go hear a kid slated to play with a youth band at the 18th & Vine Jazz and Blues Festival. The kid was Ernest Melton. "Melton, 17, floored me," Plastic Sax wrote.
He was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and grew up in the church; his father is a Primitive Baptist preacher. He moved to Kansas City at 10, picked up the saxophone that year at Longfellow Academy, and at 14 joined a jazz program through the American Jazz Museum. He credits John Coltrane with making him want to learn jazz. Berklee College of Music accepted him, but he couldn't afford to go, so he kept learning on Kansas City bandstands.
In January 2016 he played the Blue Room's "Sax Showcase." His trio cut The Time of the Slave Is Over in one day, with nothing written out; Plastic Sax called it "filled with righteous fury."
This October Plastic Sax reviewed Birth of a Revival, Blue Devil Revival's four-track EP, issued through the Mutual Musicians Foundation, with Melton on saxophone. On a May 2020 stream with the James Ward Band, Plastic Sax heard him "test the textural limits" of standards by Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter while his bandmates played them straight.
The Blue Room, 1600 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108. Monday, November 2, 2026, at 7 pm. $10 general admission; complimentary for AJM members, musicians, and students.
Event venue & nearby stays
Blue Room, 1600 East 18th Street, Kansas City, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.