Tom Hook began his career in Kansas City, playing jazz and rock bands and working as a stage performer at Worlds of Fun, before leaving in 1980 for a long association with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company — lounge entertainer on the Mississippi Queen, bandleader on the Delta Queen from late 1984, then the company's Manager of Entertainment (1999) and Director of Entertainment (2002). Along the way he worked as a staff musician at Walt Disney World, served as Music Director at Harrah's Casino New Orleans in 2001, and founded the Black Dog Jazz Band in 1987, playing major traditional-jazz festivals and touring Europe and China.
Based in New Orleans, Hook leads his New Orleans All-Stars — often fronted by trumpeter Wendell Brunious — with regular appearances at Preservation Hall, a Sunday happy-hour series at Snug Harbor, and National Park Service 'Jazz Piano Hour' concerts. He wrote and stars in the one-man show Becoming Jelly Roll, co-wrote and starred in the Big Easy Award-winning Jump Jive and Wail, the Music of Louis Prima at the National WWII Museum, and has done voiceover work for commercials and video games.
His recordings include 62 (2018) on Arbors Records — his self-described 'dream album' of classic big band, Louis Prima jump swing, vintage New Orleans R&B, lush ballads and orchestrated beat poetry, with Brunious, Tom Fischer, Rick Trolsen and vocalist Cristina Perez — and Hook Does Waits (2017), a piano-and-vocals tribute to Tom Waits. Ten releases are available on his Bandcamp.
