Monday, January 7, 2013

Thinking of the Blues Brothers

Say what you want about John Belushi, and the way he and Dan Ackroyd cashed in by recording their versions of soul and r and b hits of a generation before.  In the end, he was a fan who loved the music he performed and loved the people who had made them.  

There's no denying that the Blues Brothers -- the comic duo created by Belushi and Ackroyd on Saturday Night Live -- was a schtick.  Above all else, Dan and John were comedians. Watch Belushi as Joe Cocker, singing his Woodstock version of "A little help from my friends."   Or see him as Beethoven at the piano, forsaking the famous first notes of "number five" for the opening riff to the Temptations' "My Girl," and singing in a comic-German accent, "I gott sunshine...und a cloudee daaayyy..." (I'd link to these, but NBC/Universal is psychotic about controlling videos of SNL, and it's just not worth my time to try finding them.   Go buy the DVD box sets, or at least The Best of John Belushi, the first of the legendary best-of's, released in 1985 on VHS.)   And don't forget to watch John in his bee costume, along with Danny and the rest of the band -- with musical director Howard Shore wearing a beekeeper's outfit -- performing Muddy Waters' "I'm a King Bee."  It's hilarious and intended to be.  It's also the beginning of the Blues Brothers.

 The impetus was comic entertainment: they'd come out in their dark suits and glasses, Belushi would do cartwheels, and they'd dance like silly white boys.   But the passion they felt for Johnny Taylor, Sam and Dave, Muddy Waters, and so many other great Black musicians whose music they grew up with was very real.  This was not the cynical cashing in by mainstream record companies in the fifties having whitebread singers like Pat Boone record Little Richard hits.  (Remembering Belushi shortly after his death, Carrie Fisher describes an insight into his appreciation of Ackroyd's character: "This is Danny: I say, we have a chance to make a million dollars or go fishing. And Danny says, let me think about it.")   The musicians who played with Jake and Elwood Blues had been part of that history Belushi and Ackroyd loved.   Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn were members of the MGs, the world's best backup band, and they played on countless great hits for Stax Records of Memphis in the sixties.  Matt "Guitar" Murphy had earned his chops playing with Muddy Waters' band in the same era.   As a band, the Blues Brothers were much more real than, say, Beatlemania.  

What also makes Belushi and Ackroyd stand out is their direct embracing of these great artists.  When Ray Charles hosted SNL, it was Belushi who helped him memorize lines for the sketches he was going to be in, since Charles was obviously unable to read cue cards.  One of the central purposes of The Blues Brothers film was to showcase their heroes: Charles, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, and especially Aretha Franklin, whose career had hit a total dead end by 1980 -- it was Aretha who enjoyed the greatest career boost from the success of the John Landis film.  Belushi was not a great singer -- he was a great comic.  None of the recordings he made as one half of the Blues Brothers can hold a candle to the originals.   In some respects, the Blues Brothers are not much more than the kind of lounge act you find on cruise ships or casinos. (Think Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, whose deliberate travesty of Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" was the inspiration for Elvis Presley's much more famous version.)   But it's not fair to call them a poor minstrel act, as some critics did in 1978-80.  It's not fair to the genuine talent that played behind Belushi and Ackroyd.

If anyone went out and bought The Best of Sam and Dave because they saw Jake and Elwood listening to it -- on 8-track! -- in their car, then that's evidence of the success of the Blues Brothers' evangelical mission.   Their goal was to tell everyone, hey, we love this music, and we think you will too.   John Belushi meant well.  He didn't always do well, but he meant well.

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