Tasha Taylor
It's easy to say Tasha Taylor was born to the blues. The daughter of Stax soul legend Johnnie Taylor, Tasha literally grew up surrounded by music. She'd often leave her hometown of Dallas to go on tour with her father, learning the grind of the music business firsthand. Perhaps that's the reason why Tasha Taylor didn't initially follow her father's footsteps. She wanted to be an actress, earning some television roles when she was a kid -- she had one-shot appearances on episodes of <I>The Wayans Bros., <I>Malcolm & Eddie, <I>Family Matters, and <I>Moesha, among others -- and decided to study drama at Boston University. After college, she landed appearances on <I>Ugly Betty (2006) and <I>House M.D. (2007), but she found herself drawn back to music. Taylor sang with Jack Mack & the Heart Attack and then became part of Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi's revived Blues Brothers tour revue. Simultaneously, she began placing solo songs on soundtracks -- she had cuts on both <I>Men in Trees and <I>Lipstick Jungle -- which led to the release of her debut album, Revival, in 2008. In 2011, she released a second album, Taylormade, a de facto salute to her father. In 2016, she signed with Ruf and released her third album, Honey for the Biscuit. Taylor supported the album with a package tour called Blues Caravan, which also featured Canadian singer Layla Zoe and Finnish singer Ina Forsman. Ruf released a souvenir of this tour, Blues Caravan: Blue Sisters, in February 2017. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi