Rock Flashback: “Briefcase Full of Blues” by the Blues Brothers

Dan Aykroyd is still rockin' the sunglasses. His partner, John Belushi, died in 1982. (Getty Images/Isaac Brekken for Nightclub and Bar Show)

This week in 1979, with the disco tide rising all around, an album of old blues and R&B songs performed by an all-star band of music veterans hit #1.

The album Briefcase Full of Blues by the Blues Brothers grew out of a Saturday Night Live sketch. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi assembled a backing band containing some of the best players ever to strap on an axe: old Memphis hands Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn, horn players Tom Scott, Lou Marini, Tom Malone, and Alan Rubin, guitarist Matt “Guitar” Murphy, drummer Steve Jordan, and keyboard player Paul Shaffer.

It’s not strictly correct to call Briefcase a blues album. The presence of Cropper and Dunn and the inclusion of songs by Otis Redding and the team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter gives it a Stax feel. Deep Southern soul is represented by King Floyd‘s “Groove Me” (even as Aykroyd and Belushi give it a reggae twist) and a version of Big Joe Turner‘s “Flip Flop and Fly” is a callback to soul’s roots in the 1950s.

Critical opinion on the album was all over the map. Briefcase Full of Blues was called a respectful homage played by a solid band, and a horrible transgression by a couple of TV jokers trying to cash in on the blues. But Aykroyd and Belushi were serious fans of the blues and R&B, and if they were fulfilling a personal fantasy to become the kind of singers they admired, they were luckier than most of us. If they’d been cashing in, they probably wouldn’t have assembled a world-class band.

Here’s the opening of their show at the Universal Amphitheater in Hollywood, at which Briefcase Full of Blues was recorded.

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