A Conversation with T.J. Müller

Upon seeing his name, complete with umlaut, you might assume multi-instrumentalist T.J. Müller is of German heritage. You’d be mistaken. And with the first few words of a conversation, you would know he grew up in England. Since coming to the US ten years ago, he is becoming a more frequent fixture at trad jazz and ragtime festivals. Just in the past year I have seen him at the Templeton festival in Mississippi, the Bix Beiderbecke festival in Iowa, and West Coast Ragtime in California. Setting down roots in St. Louis, where he established the Arcadia Dance Orchestra and the Gaslight Squares Jazz Band, he frequently plays with Miss Jubilee (Valerie Kirchoff) and often is called to play with ad-hoc small groups at festivals. Such was the case when I saw him at the Bix last August. Having become a father for the first time a few weeks prior, he remarked that he came to the Bix to catch up on sleep. As if he isn’t busy enough, he hosts a weekly jazz and ragtime radio show on KDHX (88.1) and conducts tours at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site in St. Louis. BH: I’ll ask the most obvious question first. Your name is Germanic but you were born and raised in England. How did that come about? TJ: On my Dad’s side, my “Oupa” was a South African immigrant moving to the UK in the 1950s. The name Müller comes from the Afrikaans side of the family, but Oupa has Germa