The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers was a
rhythm and blues/
blues band fronted by comedians
Dan Aykroyd and
John Belushi in character. Belushi (as lead vocalist "Joliet" Jake Blues) and Aykroyd (as
harpist/vocalist Elwood Blues) were both members of the original cast of
NBC's
Saturday Night Live. The Blues Brothers' television debut was as the musical guest in the
April 22,
1978 episode of
Saturday Night Live, often cited as one of the best-ever
SNL episodes.
The genesis of the Blues Brothers was a January
1976 SNL skit. In it, "
Howard Shore and his All-Bee Band" play the
Slim Harpo song "I'm a King Bee", with Belushi singing and Aykroyd playing
harmonica, dressed in the bee costumes they wore for the "Killer Bees" sketch.
In the
January 4,
1979 edition of the
Eugene Register-Guard, an article provides key details about the real origins of Belushi's serious interest in
blues music. Belushi was in
Eugene,
Oregon, filming
National Lampoon's Animal House. In October
1977, he went to a local hotel to hear 25-year-old blues singer/harmonica player
Curtis Salgado. After the show, Belushi and Salgado talked about the blues for hours. Belushi, interviewed for the article, found Salgado's enthusiasm infectious, saying::I was growing sick of
rock and roll, it was starting to bore me...and I hated
disco, so I needed some place to go. I hadn't heard much blues before. It felt good.Salgado lent him some albums by
Floyd Dixon,
Charles Brown,
Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and others. Belushi was hooked.
Belushi began to appear with Salgado on stage, singing the Floyd Dixon song "Hey, Bartender" on a few occasions. He used Salgado's humorous alternate lyrics to "I Don't Know" that Salgado used in his act. Salgado gave the innuendo-laden lyrics to him::I said Woman, you going to walk a mile for a
Camel:Or are you going to make like Mr.
Chesterfield and satisfy?:She said that all depends on what you're packing:Regular or king-size:Then she pulled out my
Jim Beam, and to her surprise:It was every bit as hard as my
Canadian Club.
In the Blues Brothers debut
SNL performance, he used the lyrics, and also borrowed
John Lee Hooker's trademark
sunglasses and
soul patch for his Jake Blues character. The suits were inspired by
beatnik fashion.
The Blues Brothers recorded their first album,
Briefcase Full of Blues, in
1978 while opening for comedian
Steve Martin at
Los Angeles' Universal Amphitheater. The album went
double platinum, and featured
Top 40 hit
covers of
Sam and Dave's "Soul Man" and
The Chips' "
Rubber Biscuit". Despite the name of the act, most of the songs performed by The Blues Brothers throughout their existence were
soul music or
R&B classics rather than actual blues music.
The Blues Brothers, along with the
New Riders of the Purple Sage, opened for the
Grateful Dead for the final show at
Winterland, New Year's Eve 1978.
The two "brothers" assembled what could have possibly been the greatest concentration of studio talent in the history of music; these men having played with
Booker T. & the M.G.'s,
Paul McCartney &
Wings,
Miles Davis, and everybody in between.
Their style was fresh and in many ways, different from prevailing musical trends: a very raw and "live" sound compared to the increasing use of sound synthesis and vocal-dominated music of the late
1970s and
80s.
While the music of the Blues Brothers is always said to be based on rhythm, blues, and soul, it also drew heavily on rock and
jazz elements, usually taking a blues standard and bringing a rock sound and style to it. The band could be drawn into three sections: the four man horn section, the traditional rock instruments of the five-man rhythm section, and the two singing brothers. The sound of the band was an odd (but successful) synthesis of two different traditions: the horn players all came from the clean, precise, jazz-influenced sound of
New York City; while the rhythm section came from the grittier soul and blues sound of
Chicago and
Memphis. The success of this meld was due both to
Paul Shaffer's arrangements and to the musicians' talents.
In a
documentary included on some
DVD editions of the first
Blues Brothers film, guitarist Steve Cropper reports that some of his peers thought that he and the other musicians backing the Blues Brothers were
selling out to Hollywood or using a gimmick to make some quick money. Cropper responded by stating that he thought Belushi was as good as (or even better than) many of the singers Cropper had backed; he also noted that Belushi had, early in his career, briefly been a professional drummer, and had an especially keen sense of
rhythm.
The full band (not all appeared in the movie) was:
*"Joliet" Jake E. Blues - vocals
*Elwood J. Blues - harmonica, vocals
*
Steve "the Colonel" Cropper -
lead/
rhythm guitar*
Donald "Duck" Dunn -
bass guitar*
Steve "Getdwa" Jordan - drums
*
Tom "Bones" Malone -
trombone,
trumpet,
saxophone*"Blue"
Lou Marini - saxophone
*
Matt "Guitar" Murphy - lead/rhythm guitar
*
Alan "Mr. Fabulous" Rubin - trumpet
*
Paul "the Shiv" Shaffer -
keyboards,
arrangements
*
Tom "Triple Scale" Scott - saxophone
The band later included:
*Zee Blues (
James Belushi) - vocals
*"Mighty Mack" McTeer (
John Goodman) - vocals
*Buster Blues (
J. Evan Bonifant) - harmonica, vocals (actual harmonica recorded by
John Popper)
*Cab Chamberlain (
Joe Morton)- vocals
In
1980,
The Blues Brothers film, directed by
John Landis, was released, featuring
cameo appearances by
Aretha Franklin,
James Brown,
Cab Calloway,
Ray Charles,
John Lee Hooker,
Carrie Fisher,
Frank Oz,
Steven Spielberg,
Twiggy,
Joe Walsh,
John Candy,
Steve Lawrence, and
Paul Reubens playing a waiter in the
Chez Paul restaurant. The motion picture is set in
Chicago, Illinois and the surrounding area.
Chaka Khan is credited as the lead soloist at the Triple Rock Church where Jake and Elwood have their revelation to re-form the band, and
Twiggy also cameos as a driver of a
Jaguar E-type, whom Elwood hits on at a gas station.
Charles Napier, well known from various
Russ Meyer films, appears as the leader of "The
Good ol' boys".
Blues Brothers 2000 picks up 18 years after
The Blues Brothers, with Elwood being released from prison, this time a rather high-tech
private prison rather than the old Illinois state prison depicted in the first film. He learns that Jake has died, along with their surrogate father figure Curtis (
Cab Calloway), and the orphanage the two had saved in the first film is no more. He takes a job as an announcer in a
nightclub, where he discovers that the
bartender (played by
John Goodman) has singing talent, while getting on the bad side of the
Russian mafia who have been demanding payoffs from the nightclub. After the Russian mafia burn down the club, Elwood resolves to put the band back together once again with John Goodman's character as his new partner and a 10-year old
orphan named Buster also tagging along. The band travels to several locations shown in the first film with a depiction of how they have changed in the intervening years (Bob's Country Bunker for example is now Bob's Country Kitchen, a family restaurant). Finally they head south to
Louisiana with the intention of entering a battle of the bands held at the home of a
voodoo practitioner named Queen Moussette, played by
Erykah Badu.At the battle of the bands they compete against B.B. Kings band, which by ironic or writer plot only started the band after Elwood bought a police car from him in the beginning of the film.
At the time of the movie's release, Belushi's wife, Judith Jacklin, and his friend, Tino Insana, wrote a book,
Blues Brothers: Private, fleshing out the Blues Brothers universe and giving backstory for the first movie. The book is now somewhat difficult to find.
In
1981,
The Best of the Blues Brothers was released; this album would be the first of several compilations and hits collections issued over the years.
On
March 5,
1982, Belushi died in
Hollywood of an accidental overdose of
heroin and cocaine.
An animated sitcom with Jake and Elwood was planned, but scrapped after only a couple of episodes were produced.
To promote Blues Brothers 2000, Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman performed at the halftime of
Super Bowl XXXI, along with
ZZ Top and
James Brown. The performance was preceded with a faux news report stating the Blues Brothers had escaped custody and were on their way to the
Louisiana Superdome. (The raucous innuendo-laden performance was considered somewhat scandalous at the time, although it was eclipsed by the
Super Bowl XXXVIII show which culminated in
Janet Jackson's infamous
"wardrobe malfunction".)
After Belushi's death, updated versions of the Blues Brothers have performed on
SNL and for charitable and political causes. Aykroyd has been accompanied by
Jim Belushi and
John Goodman in character as "Zee" Blues and "Mighty Mack" Blues. The copyright owners have also authorized some copycat acts to perform under the Blues Brothers name; one such act performs regularly at the
Universal Studios Florida theme park in
Orlando,
Florida and
Universal Studios Hollywood.
In
1988 Cropper, Dunn, Murphy, and others re-formed The Blues Brothers Band for a world tour. They released an album of new material in
1992 entitled
Red White and Blues, which included a guest appearance from Elwood Blues.
Several Blues Brothers video games have been made, including two
Amiga/
PC platform games by
Titus. In 1991, the same company produced a Blues Brothers video game for the
NES and
Super NES. A
Nintendo 64 Game titled
Blues Brothers 2000 was also released.
Aykroyd has continued to be an active proponent of blues music and parlayed this avocation into foundation and partial ownership of the
House of Blues franchise, an international chain of nightclubs. In character as Elwood, he also hosts the syndicated
House of Blues Radio Hour.
The movie also became a staple of late night cinema, even slowly morphing into an audience participation show in its regular screenings at the
Valhalla Cinema, in
Melbourne,
Australia. John Landis acknowledged the support of the cinema and the fans by a phone call he made to the cinema at the tenth anniversary screening, and later invited regular attendees to make cameo appearances in the sequel (they are members of the crowd during the performance of "
Ghost Riders in the Sky").
John Belushi's brother
Jim Belushi toured with the band for a short time, and even recorded the album "
Blues Brothers & Friends: LIVE! From Chicago's H.O.B" with Dan Aykroyd but unfortunately, he didn't appear in "
Blues Brothers 2000"(1998). It's rumoured he was approached to play not the role of
Mighty Mack (played by
John Goodman) but the role of the local Sheriff Chamberlain (which later went to
Joe Morton). Jim would later reunite with Aykroyd to record yet another album, not as the Blues Brothers but as themselves: '
BELUSHI/AYKROYD - "Have Love Will Travel(Big Men-Big Music)."
In 2004, the musical "
The Blues Brothers Revival'" premiered in Chicago. The story centered around the character of Elwood Blues trying to rescue his brother Jake from an eternity in limbo/purgatory. The musical was written and composed with the approval and permission from both the
John Belushi-estate (including his widow
Jackie Belushi Pisano) and Dan Aykroyd.
The Blues Brothers Bar was an illegal basement tavern operated on
Wells Street In Chicago's
Old Town in the 1970s and 1980s which was started by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. The Bar was down the street from
The Second City theater. In the DVD commentary of the film
Thief (a film staring James Belushi shot in Chicago in 1981),
James Caan mentions the bar. The bar was run by a college friend whom Belushi met at
College of DuPage, the friend often operated as a bouncer. As the bar was un-licenced, alcohol was bought by the purchase of 'tickets' which were then traded to the bartender for the drinks.
There have been various takeoffs and parodies of The Blues Brothers, most notably in the Chicago area.
*During their drive to the
Super Bowl in 1985, the
Chicago Bears, members of the "
Black and Blue Division" of the
NFL, issued a poster of nine of their offensive linemen wearing sunglasses and black hats. The poster was titled, "The Black and Blues Brothers". The poster was an incredible success, and led to a series of similarly-themed television commercials which parodied scenes from the movie. The catch phrase of the commercials was, "We're on a mission", eliminating the "from God" portion of the original phrase.
*The
Chicago Cubs produced a TV ad similar to the movie scene in which the brothers arrive at a
brownstone apartment seeking some former band members. When the landlady asks, "Are you the police?" they answer, "No, ma'am, we're Cubs fans". Then they launch into a parody of "Soul Man": "Comin' to ya... In the summertime... Cubs baseball... Here on
Channel 9... I'm a Cubs fan... I'm a Cubs fan..."
*A similar idea was used in a
Budweiser ad campaign featuring Cubs broadcaster
Harry Caray in the Blues Brothers costume, also known as the "Cubs Fan Bud Man" campaign.
*During the
Oakland Athletics' run of success from 1988 to 1992,
sluggers
Jose Canseco and
Mark McGwire were tagged "the Bash Brothers" and appeared in Blues Brothers costumes for a promotional poster.
*While the NBA's
Chicago Bulls were making their championship runs in the 1990s, an act called "the Bulls Brothers" often performed at halftime, with the performers bearing striking resemblances to Belushi and the younger, thinner Aykroyd.
*In the
Nickelodeon show,
Drake & Josh, there is one episode entitled "
Blues Brothers", in which both Drake Parker and Josh Nichols sing their song in their talent show,
Soul Man.
*
Official site*
Blues Brothers Central (Official Fansite)*
alt.fan.blues-brothers FAQ and
Salgado story, from a fan's directory on a university website
*
*
Barraclou.com Movie locations then and now*
Chicago Filming Locations based on
Google Maps*
The Birth of the Blues (Brothers), a January 1979 article from the
Eugene Register-Guard*
Interview (MP3) with John Belushi biographer Tanner Colby and widow Judith Belushi Pisano on the public radio program
The Sound of Young America regarding their book, "Belushi". Includes clips from Belushi's work on The
National Lampoon Radio Hour.
*
The Blues Brothers Links Archive
