June 28 was a gorgeous, sunny day, and the Kansas City, Kansas, Street Blues Festival was the best place in town to be that weekend. The scrappy, free festival in the parking lot of the Koran Temple at 13th Street and State Avenue celebrates all of the real blues still going on in this city. This year's Queen of the Festival, Myra Taylor, didn't disappoint. After a parade in her honor, Taylor told the audience that she kept wanting to cry because, in all her years, she'd never felt as good as she did that day. And though she woke up that morning a little hoarse and sang from a wheelchair, the saucy Taylor showed she still had plenty of voice, through a half-dozen songs with the Luqman Hamza Trio. After her set, Kansas City, Kansas, City Councilman Nathan Barnes took the stage with a message from Mayor Joe Reardon. Barnes read a proclamation and, to Taylor's wide-eyed surprise, bestowed upon her the key to the city. Clearly moved, speaking in a quiet, shaky voice, Taylor told Barnes to please thank the mayor — and then she couldn't stop those tears she'd been holding back all day. The crowd jumped to its feet for the speechless Taylor. This was no time for questioning why no one had given her the key to the city decades ago, or how one little afternoon at a tough street corner in a run-down town was the happiest day in the life of a 91-year-old who'd been to 32 countries. It was simply the blues, showing its heart.
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