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The Blues Brothers

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The Blues Brothers: Dan Aykroyd (left) and John Belushi.

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 band's formation

The genesis of the Blues Brothers could be found in 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 Salgado's trademark sunglasses and soul patch for his Jake Blues character.

Belushi made it a point to credit Salgado whenever he could, dedicating the first Blues Brothers album to Salgado and sending him a photo of Belushi and Aykroyd in character, writing on it "Without you, we'd still be just TV actors." They regularly used his name in the introduction of their live show.

First album

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 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 Blues Brothers Band

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:

The Blues Brothers movie

The Blues Brothers
File:The Blues Brothers DVD Cover.jpg
Directed byJohn Landis
Written byDan Aykroyd
John Landis
Produced byBernie Brillstein
George Folsey Jr.
David Sosna
Robert K. Weiss
StarringJohn Belushi
Dan Aykroyd
Carrie Fisher
John Candy
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release dates
20 June, 1980
Running time
133 min.
LanguageEnglish

In 1980, The Blues Brothers film, directed by John Landis, was released, featuring cameos by Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Gary U.S. Bonds, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Carrie Fisher, Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, 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, Twiggy also cameos as a driver of an E-type jaguar, 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".

The famous mall chase scene was filmed in the real, albeit abandoned, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois. The bridge jump was filmed on an actual drawbridge on the southeast side of Chicago. In the final car chase scene, the production actually dropped a car, representing the one driven by the "Illinois Nazis," from a helicopter for the long drop. The shot leading up to the car drop, where the "Illinois Nazis" drive off a freeway ramp, was shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on an unfinished freeway ramp that wasn't completed until over a decade later. Several Milwaukee skyscrapers are visible in the background as the Bluesmobile flips over.

The Blues Brothers also toured that year to promote the movie. Jake and Elwood released their second LP, the soundtrack to the film, which included the Top 40 hit "Gimme Some Lovin'". They followed the soundtrack with Made In America, a live performance like Briefcase Full Of Blues, which featured the top 40 track "Who's Making Love". Sales of Made In America were disappointing, and it marked the last new Blues Brothers album to feature Belushi's Jake Blues.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Blues Brothers the 14th greatest comedy film of all time.

Plot details

Template:Spoiler The movie revolves around the title characters, who are reunited at the beginning of the film as "Joliet" Jake is released from Joliet Prison into his brother's custody (he was imprisoned for armed robbery). Elwood immediately irritates Jake by picking him up in a former City of Mount Prospect police car, a 1974 Dodge Monaco (which replaced their Cadillac, the "Bluesmobile", which Elwood had traded for a microphone). Jake is somewhat mollified when Elwood demonstrates the "new" car's powers by vaulting it over an open drawbridge.

They then visit the orphanage which was their childhood home, and learn that it is to be torn down unless the back property taxes on the building can be paid within a short time. (Although this is normally regarded as a goof, as church-owned property is exempt from property tax, it was actually based on a real bill that was being put through at the time of the writing of the film. The bill was never enacted into law.) The orphanage director, a nun referred to on-screen only as "The Penguin", emphatically refuses to accept any "filthy, stolen" money from the brothers. At the prompting of Curtis,the orphanage worker that introduced the brothers to the blues in the basement of the orphanage (played by Cab Calloway), a visit to an evangelical church service gives the duo an epiphany: they can legitimately raise the necessary funds by taking their legendary rhythm and blues band for a tour. As they drive home, Elwood attracts the unwanted attention of two Illinois state troopers with his reckless driving habits. He has 54 warrants for 114 parking violations, according to the troopers' on-board "SCMODS" computer. (Elwood pronounces it "Skmods", which he says stands for "State County Municipal Offender Data System".) He then earns the pursuing officers' undying enmity by driving through a shopping mall to escape capture. (Director Landis cameos as another police officer during this chase.) With the assistance of John Candy's character, the two law officers track the brothers down to the flophouse where Elwood is living, but only after being thrown off the trail because Elwood had falsified his vehicle registration with the address of 1060 West Addison, the address of Wrigley Field. Just as the three police are about to move in for the arrest, the flophouse is blown up by a mysterious woman (Fisher). Miraculously, the Blues Brothers climb out of the smoking rubble unhurt, still wanted by the police.

File:Blues Brothers Lower Wacker.jpg
The famous car chase scene on Lower Wacker Drive

The Blues Brothers spend the rest of the film's first half tracking down members of the Band and convincing them to re-join, as well as playing venues to raise the requisite $5,000 needed to save the orphanage. Staged and spontaneous musical numbers spring up throughout their their journey. Along with the aforementioned troopers, the duo also make numerous other enemies along the way, notably a neo-Nazi group ("The Illinois Nazis" led by Henry Gibson) and a Country and Western band called "The Good Ol' Boys" (led by Charles Napier) who start to pursue the band when they steal their gig at Bob's Country Bunker. This section famously features the gig where the band evidently play only two songs all night long in repetition ("Rawhide" and "Stand By Your Man"). The band flee their huge bar tab, initially pursued by The Good Ol' Boys, and later by the mysterious woman (eventually revealed to be Jake's jilted fiancée) who continually tries to kill them using various methods, including a bazooka, a flamethrower and an assault rifle {and failing like Wile E. Coyote}. Several car chases, with an extremely large number of crashes, result (in parody of the car chases in earlier movies such as The French Connection).

The film culminates in a live concert, during which Cab Calloway opens with "Minnie the Moocher", and then the Blues Brothers perform two songs before escaping from the surrounding police cordon with the timely help of a record executive. This is followed by a final massive car chase in which, with much of the Chicago police force in pursuit, the brothers race to deliver the money raised from the concert to downtown Chicago in time to pay the tax debt owed by the orphanage. The target building is stormed by scores of police, firefighters, and the U.S. Military. Literally seconds after paying the bill the brothers are arrested, and the film ends with the entire band playing Jailhouse Rock for their fellow inmates.

The Blues Brothers is often regarded as the best of many films adapted from Saturday Night Live sketches. It effectively combines the deadpan humor of Belushi and Aykroyd as the title characters with over-the-top action and slapstick sequences (the film held the record for the most cars destroyed in one film until surpassed by its own sequel), interspersed with highly-stylized musical numbers from the soul music legends in the supporting cast.


Wikiquote has quotations related to The Blues Brothers.

Later activity

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 a speedball (accidental drug overdose).

An animated sitcom with Jake and Elwood was planned, but scrapped.

To promote Blues Brothers 2000, Dan Akroyd 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 towards the stadium.

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").

Takeoffs

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 parodyed 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.

Movie sequel

In 1998, Blues Brothers 2000 was released to theaters. It featured John Goodman singing with Aykroyd and cameos by Blues Traveler, B.B. King, Erykah Badu, Junior Wells, Steve Lawrence, Taj Mahal, Lonnie Brooks, James Brown, Eric Clapton, Nia Peeples, Darrell Hammond, Steve Winwood, Eddie Floyd, Paul Shaffer, Billy Preston, Koko Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Dr. John, Joshua Redman, Lou Rawls, Travis Tritt, Jimmie Vaughan, Wilson Pickett, John Popper, Jonny Lang and many others, many of whom featured as members of the fictional band The Louisiana Gator Boys. The featured car in the new film was a Ford Crown Victoria, replacing the Dodge Monaco as the new Bluesmobile.

Template:Spoiler 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 passed away, 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.

The sequel was widely panned by critics and disliked by fans of the original film.

Belushi and the band's original keyboardist Paul Shaffer had become estranged by the time filming began on the first movie due to Shaffer's commitment to Gilda Radner's one-woman show, which was on Broadway at the same time. Shaffer was replaced in the band by Murphy Dunne. However, Shaffer appears in Blues Brothers 2000 as Marco, Queen Moussette's aide.

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