The Blues Brothers

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Image:BluesBrothers.jpgThe Blues Brothers was a rhythm and blues band fronted by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in character. Belushi (as vocalist Joliet Jake Blues) and Aykroyd (as harpist 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.

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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 kind of sick of rock and roll 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.

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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.

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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, often 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.

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:

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The Blues Brothers movie

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 filling up her car being chatted up by Elwood. 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.

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.

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Plot details

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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).

Shortly after Jake's release, they learn that the orphanage which was their childhood home 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.) A visit to an evangelical church service gives the brothers an epiphany: they can raise the necessary funds, legitimately, by taking their legendary rhythm and blues band for a tour. The same day, Elwood attracts the unwanted attention of the police with his reckless driving habits; he then earns their enmity by driving through a shopping mall—the actual mall, not just the parking lot—to escape capture. The Chicago Police track them down to a flophouse where Elwood is living, but only after being thrown off the trail at first because Elwood had falsified his vehicle registration with the address of 1060, West Addison, a.k.a. Wrigley Field. Just as the police are about to move in for the arrest, the flophouse is blown up by a mysterious woman (Fisher). Miraculously (and comically), the Blues Brothers get away unhurt, still wanted by the police.

Image:Blues Brothers Lower Wacker.jpg 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 commence during their journey. The duo also make numerous enemies along the way, notably a neo-Nazi group (The Illinois Nazis) (led by Henry Gibson), a pair of Illinois state troopers (one of whom is cameoed by director John Landis himself), 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 (which can be seen on the Universal Studios Tour just as your tour bus is being attacked by Jaws the shark). This section famously features the gig where the band play only the same two songs all night long ("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 who is later revealed to be Jake's jilted fiancée who continually tries (and fails) to kill them using various methods, including a bazooka (which famously fires more shots than it actually holds) and a flamethrower. 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 the Blues Brothers perform. This is followed by a massive car chase in which the brothers try to deliver the money raised from the concert to downtown Chicago in time to pay the tax debt owed by the orphanage. The film held the record for the most cars destroyed in one film, until the record was surpassed by its sequel.

The film effectively combines the deadpan humor of Belushi and Aykroyd as the title characters with over-the-top action and slapstick sequences, interspersed with highly-stylized musical numbers from the soul music legends in the supporting cast.

The Blues Brothers is often regarded as the best of many films adapted from Saturday Night Live sketches.

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Later activity

In 1981, The Best of the Blues Brothers was released; this disc 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 drug overdose.

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 games by Titus. In 1991, the same company produced a Blues Brothers video game for the NES.

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.

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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.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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 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.

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External links

fr:The Blues Brothers it:The Blues Brothers nl:The Blues Brothers ja:ブルースブラザーズ simple:The Blues Brothers sv:The Blues Brothers

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