On September 9, 1978, Steve Martin performed his wildly popular wild and crazy guy, arrow through the head, stand up routine at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. The entire staff of my college newspaper, including me, had tickets to this show. I however gave mine away. Martin’s act wasn’t my thing. The Monday after that weekend’s show, I heard all day from my fellow students and colleagues at the paper that the opening act was a musical group that played, “that crap that you listen to all the time Dave.”

The opening act of course was The Blues Brothers. Less than three months later that performance was released as a concert album on Atlantic Records entitled, Brief Case Full of Blues. It became a huge hit and for the first time (and probably the last) “the crap that Dave listens to all the time” was hip with a large mainstream audience. The record was number one on the Billboard charts and was certified as double platinum.

In the thirty five years since those heady fall days of our youth, The Blues Brothers remain an instantly identifiable brand. The Blues Brothers also represent a somewhat controversial subject whose mere mention can evoke heated debate amongst blues music aficionados and musicians.

Are The Blues Brothers the best or worst thing to happen to blues music in the last thirty five years? Can they be both at the same time? Did their reviving an interest in blues and 60’s era soul music come at too high a price? Did that act demean blues music and put the genre in sort of a burlesque mode from which it has yet to recover? To what degree, if any, did their concerts, records and films help kick start the blues revival that took place in the wake of this phenomenon? Did their first film really help revive the fortunes of incredibly talented artists such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown, whose careers had been pushed to the side by disco, glam rock and the fuckin’ Eagles? Did this band’s music, which actually had more to do with soul, create confusion as to what is and what isn’t blues music? Did the truly talented character actors and sketch comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who made up the face of this act, exploit this music for their own ends or did they use their celebrity status to pay homage and give back to the genre?

I’m not sure that I have a definitive answer to any of these questions. I suspect that our very thoughtful readers just might and I look forward to hearing from you on this topic.  

What I do know is that when I see the 1980 Universal Pictures film directed by John Landis entitled, The Blues Brothers, I laugh out loud, at times cringe and get a huge kick out of seeing John Lee Hooker play with Big Walter Horton and Muddy’s band during the Maxwell Street market scene.

Like many of my generation I first saw The Blues Brothers band perform on television. For a college aged kid in 1976 nothing, and I mean nothing, was hipper and more fun on T.V. than Saturday Night Live. Before it became an institution, it was a new phenomenon where the humor seemed so subversive, outrageous and irreverent it felt like at any moment you could suddenly, and without warning, find yourself staring at an Indian-head test pattern. Matt, you are going to have to “Google” Indian-head test pattern.

The ensemble that was billed as The Blues Brothers Show Band and Review appeared on SNL three times in the late 70’s. For many, these performances might as well have been just another comedy sketch parody. It wasn’t. It was the brainchild of Dan Aykroyd who had developed a real affection for blues, rhythm and blues as well as Southern soul music of the 1960’s. He schooled his colleague and friend John Belushi in the music. Belushi also got a crash course in this music by seeing a performance by Curtis Salgado in Oregon while shooting the movie Animal House. He engaged the musician who was close in age to himself and realized this music is a vital art form and not a museum piece.

Belushi became infatuated with these mysterious sounds that lay beneath the American dream and just outside its collective consciousness. He now understood what his pal Danny had known for years. They recruited a top flight back up band of seasoned professionals and with Paul Shaffer at the helm as their musical director a formidable nine piece rhythm and blues band was formed. As Aykroyd himself acknowledged in interviews through the years, he and Belushi were average musicians who got better.

I found their act to be generally entertaining and a lot of fun. Of all the people who have been charged with being blues posers, I found The Blues Brothers to be the least objectionable. They were an ensemble of some very serious musicians who didn’t take themselves too seriously. They were also fronted by two comedic actors who understood what works with an audience and were masters of the seemingly lost art of stagecraft. The Blues Brothers were a whole lot more enjoyable and entertaining than Bruce Willis, Steven Segal, Hugh Laurie or any of the countless blues interlopers that continue to plague the genre.

On September 5, 1998,  almost twenty years to the day after their Universal Amphitheater gig, a group billed as The Blues Brothers Band returned to Southern California where they headlined the Long Beach Blues Festival. The band’s musical director this afternoon was their long time guitarist, Steve Cropper. Other original band members who played that afternoon in this unit, which was by now a revolving ensemble of first call musicians, included guitarist Matt Murphy, tenor sax man Lou Marini and the late trumpet virtuoso Alan Rubin. On this performance the band was fronted by the great soul singers Eddie Floyd and Wilson Pickett.

For me it was a glorious day spent watching part of a Saint Louis Cardinal baseball game with Cropper, a native Missourian. We were both pulling for California native Mark McGuire to hit his 60^th homer. As soon as he accomplished that feat, we drove over to a small rehearsal studio where Cropper sat down and scribbled out a set list, made copies and passed it around to the band. The eight piece unit jammed on Green Onions for about a half hour as they waited for Wilson Pickett to show up. Practice makes perfect as the band sounded sharp a couple hours later on stage and I didn’t even have to watch Steve Martin do balloon tricks or listen to any actors sing for that matter. Life was good. The blues music revival was in full swing and I wasn’t burdened with the knowledge that it would come crashing down three years later.

In the thirty five years since Briefcase Full of Blues went double platinum, there have been two Blues Brothers’ movies. Dan Aykroyd in his Elwood Blues persona is still hosting an hour long, nationally syndicated, weekly radio program. We have witnessed the rise of blues themed restaurants and entertainment emporiums across the country called The House of Blues where you can purchase Blues Brothers merchandise in their gift shops. There are actually Blues Brothers cover bands out there. I never understood this, as to me it would be like going to a show to see a guy do an impression of Rich Little? Max, you are going to have to “Google” Rich Little.

However, thirty five years after the dream of Dan Aykroyd to put blues music on television, in movie theatres and in large concert venues, the music is right back where it was in 1978. We have returned to that place where a whole new generation of extremely talented blues musicians has trouble finding work. Simply put, they still have House of Blues nightclubs, they just don‘t have blues music playing inside them.

In the midst of the hullabaloo surrounding this entertainment institution known as The Blues Brothers, there is one moment that stands out for me.

That moment comes part way through the first Blues Brothers film where everything slows down, even if it is just for a moment. The scene takes place in the flop house that is the residence of one Elwood Blues. He with his brother, together against all odds, is trying to present blues music to the public. They are trying to do right by others, in that they are in the midst of trying to save the orphanage in which they were raised. They are planning to use blues music not just as a tool for a figurative salvation, but as a literal one as well.

Elwood is now faced with the prospect of spending the night sleeping upright in a chair. He looks out the window as the teeth rattling elevated trains of Chicago race by just outside his tiny domicile. Inside he is with the only family he has ever known. The bond between these two fictional brothers was forged by the love of blues music so deep and profound they will risk anything and everything to present it to audiences. Elwood just stares out at a cruel, unforgiving world while listening to Louis Jordan’s Let the Good Times Roll.

Every day it seems we might have to confront ex-girlfriends with flame throwers, red necks in Winnebago’s, the National Guard and Nazi’s, but we press on. Thanks to this great American music and The Blues Brothers for reminding us to press on and to let the good times roll.

- David Mac