NEW YORK – The shades are on, the skinny tie is knotted and the fedora is perched just so — Dan Aykroyd is ready to look back.
The actor-comedian is revving up the Bluesmobile to reminisce about the years he teamed up with John Belushi as the Blues Brothers, taking Hollywood and the Billboard charts by storm.
Aykroyd writes and narrates the Audible Original “Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude,” which starts with him meeting Belushi one freezing night in Toronto in 1973 and takes us to today, with gigs still lining up. The documentary drops Thursday.
“It’s cool to keep doing it after 40-some years,” Aykroyd says from his summer home in Canada. “It’s because it’s based on the honesty of African American culture and the music and two white guys who just loved it so much that we had to emulate it and do it in this way.”
The documentary traces their appearances on “SNL” and their breakthrough album “Briefcase Full of Blues” to the 1980 movie and its hit soundtrack, the death of Belushi and Aykroyd’s commitment to carry on the tradition with a new partner — Belushi’s brother, Jim — with the creation of House of Blues nightclubs and the “Blues Brothers 2000” movie sequel.
The two-hour lookback includes interviews with Jim Belushi, band leader Paul Shaffer, singer Curtis Salgado, director John Landis, drummer Steve Jordan, widow Judy Belushi Pisano, saxophonist Lou Marini and more, as well as a previously unheard interview with John Belushi himself.
“I provided the structural skeleton to a lot of really strong organic material there,” says Aykroyd. “I think it really brought back the time vividly.”
Listeners will learn that “SNL” creator and producer Lorne Michaels wasn’t a fan of the fictional brothers’ act and that their rise was something of a disruption for record labels and movie studios. Key moments came when Willie Nelson and then Steve Martin invited them as opening acts.
The concept was admittedly a little odd: Two white comedians fronting a first-rate blues band with the express purpose of celebrating a musical form that had grown dusty.
The Blues Brothers — Aykroyd’s Elwood and Belushi’s “Joliet” Jake — wore black suits and black string ties inspired by comedian Lenny Bruce and snap-brim fedora hats and shades borrowed from the album cover of John Lee Hooker’s “House of the Blues.”
Aykroyd says in the audio documentary that the pair saw an opportunity for something fresh, fun and classic “in that tiny orbital skip of an electron during the seconds between disco and New Wave.”
After successful turns on “SNL,” — first as a warm-up act then as performers — they released an album “Briefcase Full of Blues” — with the hit cover “Soul Man” — and then a cult movie as the pair lead police, some Nazis and a furious country act on spectacular chases through Illinois to raise $5,000 to save their childhood home. It had cameos by Carrie Fisher, Chaka Khan, Twiggy, Joe Walsh, Paul Reubens and Frank Oz.
Listeners will learn that one of the most memorable lines was a collaboration. Aykroyd wrote “It’s a 106 miles to Chicago. We’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes.” Landis added: “It’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.”
The movie was also filled to the brim with blues stars — like Donald “Duck” Dunn, Steve Cropper, Matt Murphy — and performances by Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Ray Charles, who were struggling through fallow periods.
“You may say appropriation. We did, yes, but we preserved as well,” says Aykroyd. “That is what we were always about. We wanted, forever on film, to show you what these artists could do and what they sounded like.”
But exhibitors in the South — particularly Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Georgia — balked. “The consensus was, by these guys, ‘‘This is a Black movie and no white people would see it,’” Landis recalls. “I remember going, ‘It has Princess Leia in it!’”
Ultimately, the Blues Brothers — the films, records, skits and music venues — helped fill jukeboxes across the globe with classics and revived the careers of Franklin, Brown and Charles, creating a new love for the blues.
“I’m happy that, we were able to re-stimulate interest in these people that we loved,” says Aykroyd, who cites dancing with Brown, singing with Little Richard and acting with Franklin as career highlights.
He and Jim Belushi still tour — including an upcoming gig this August at Blues Brothers Con at the historic Joliet Prison in Illinois — and Aykroyd sees the venture as like a law firm
“Jake and Elwood founded it. And now it’s got new partners and new associates. It has great endurance. The reason is because the music is real. The songs are real.”
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
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