Now and then a comedy bit would become a hit single in the 1970s – Steve Martin told us about “King Tut,” Ray Stevens capitalized on the running nude fad with “The Streak.” But much rarer, then and now, was a hit that was credible music that began as a joke. But the one notable exception appeared on record store shelves this day in 1978. Live from New York (except it was L.A.) it’s The Blues Brothers! Their first album, Briefcase Full Of Blues came out 43 years ago.
The Blues Brothers were in fact, Saturday Night Live comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. They played brothers Joliet and Elwood Blues for the first time in a skit on the show in 1976. The shady characters in shades played old blues music and became popular on the late night show. Aykroyd said “the duo thing and the dancing came from John Lee Hooker. The suits…if you were a jazz player in the ’40s,’50s,’60s, to look straight you had to wear a suit.” Although designed as an ongoing comic gag, SNL had a pretty good house band, and both men really loved old blues music. Aykroyd, a Canadian, had even played in the Downchild Blues Band, probably the country’s top blues act in the ’70s, at times. So it wasn’t so surprising they’d eventually put out a record.
Neither perhaps was it a surprise it would be a live one, since they performed that way on TV…or that they were opening for another Saturday Night Live star. The performance recorded was them as the opening act for Steve Martin’s comedy routine, one night that fall in Los Angeles. They brought along a talented band to back “Elwood”s harmonica and “Joliet”s singing, including Paul Shaffer on piano, Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn on guitar and bass respectively (both were members of Booker T & the MGs and regular session players for Stax Records), four horn players and drummer Steve Jordan from the SNL house band. If you recognize his name, it might because he’s been in the news this year, being the new drummer for the Rolling Stones on tour.
The 11-song set opens and closes with Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and rolls through a variety of blues and R&B oldies including Junior Wells’ “Messin’ With the Kid”, “Groove Me” by King Floyd, Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” and even a Downchild Blues Band number, “Shotgun Blues.” It didn’t take long to realize that Belushi knew his stuff and despite its origins, this was far from a joke to any of the players. As allmusic later noted, giving it a 4-star rating, “what started as a skit…quickly snowballed to become a true phenomenon” and that “what comes across in these performances is the sincerity of the feeling – that and some tasty playing from a topnotch band.” Rolling Stone at the time had perhaps the best quote, “the band’s got a street-smart sound that’s tighter than a toad’s ass.” Presumably, that is some kind of tight!
The record did well, with “Soul Man” getting to #14 for them in the U.S. and “Rubber Biscuit” also cracking the top 40. The album itself was a surprise #1 hit, and went double-platinum at home, and hit #4 in Aykroyd’s Canada, where it also got them a platinum album. The pair of course put out a movie in 1980 and its soundtrack as well as another live album before Belushi’s untimely death in 1982. Aykroyd’s periodically revisited the “band” for tours, with a variety of new vocalists ranging from actor John Goodman to veteran soul men like Sam Moore and Eddie Floyd.