The Blues Brothers

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

The Blues Brothers is the name of a rhythm and blues band fronted, incognito, by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

Belushi (as vocalist Jake Blues) and Aykroyd (as harpist Elwood Blues), both members of the original cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live television program, created The Blues Brothers and their alternate identities in early 1976 to warm up SNL audiences.

The Blues Brothers made their first appearance on air at SNL, with Belushi and Aykroyd dressed in the bee costumes they normally wore for the "Killer Bees" sketch, performing Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee." In the weeks following that performance, The Blues Brothers became a popular addition to the show and began to appear on a semi-regular basis. Part of the humour is the image of two men who are dressed in black suits looking like mob hitmen or the police ("No, ma'am, we're musicians.") suddenly exploding into energetic song and dance.

Backing Jake and Elwood were top session men like guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, formerly of the Stax Records house band Booker T. and the M.G.s; and Matt "Guitar" Murphy.

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 blues music.

The Blues Brothers also opened for the Grateful Dead at the closing of Winterland show, New Year's Eve 1978.

The Blues Brothers movie

In 1980, The Blues Brothers motion picture, 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, 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 & Elwood have their revelation to re-form the band, British Model Twiggy (real name Leslie Hornby) also cameoes as a driver filling up her car being chatted up by Elwood. Charles Napier, well known from various Russ Meyers films, appears as the leader of "The Good Ol' Boys".

The famous mall chase scene was filmed in a real mall, the Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois.

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.

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). 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 later shot down.) 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 lose them. 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 Wrigley Field.

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 orphnange. Staged and spontaneous musical numbers commence during their journey. The duo also make numerous enemies along the way, notably a neo-Nazi group (led by Henry Gibson), the Chicago Police Department, a pair of Illinois state troopers (one of whom is cameoed by Director John Landis himself!), a Country and Western band (led by Charles Napier), and Jake's former fiancée (Carrie Fisher) 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 (possibly 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 get 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 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.

Later activity

In 1981, The Best of the Blues Brothers was released; this disc would be the first of several compliations 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.

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 platformer 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 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.

Blues Brothers 2000

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, Taj Mahal, Lonnie Brooks, James Brown, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Eddie Floyd, Paul Shaffer, Billy Preston, Koko Taylor, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Dr. John, Joshua Redman, Lou Rawls, Travis Tritt, Jimmie Vaughan, Wilson Pickett 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 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.

External links

• alt.fan.blues-brothers FAQ
• The Blues Brothers at IMDb
• Barraclou.com - Blues Brothers
• BluesBrothersCentral.com
• Chicago Filming Locations based on Google Maps