NEW YORK — The shades are on, the skinny tie is knotted, and the fedora is perched. Dan Aykroyd is ready to look back.
Aykroyd 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.
“It’s cool to keep doing it after 40-some years,” Aykroyd said 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 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, Belushi’s death, 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 retrospective includes interviews with Jim Belushi, band leader Paul Shaffer, singer Curtis Salgado, director John Landis, drummer Steve Jordan, widow Judy Belushi Pisano and more, as well as a previously unheard interview with John Belushi himself.
“I provided the structural skeleton to a lot of solid organic material there,” says Aykroyd. “I think it 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 disrupted record labels and movie studios. Key moments came when Willie Nelson and Steve Martin invited them as opening acts.
The concept was admittedly a little odd: Two white comedians fronting a first-rate blues band to celebrate 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 106 miles to Chicago. We’ve got a full gas tank, 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 and Matt Murphy — and performances by Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Ray Charles, who struggled through fallow periods.
“You may say appropriation. We did, 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 restimulate 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 are still touring — including an upcoming gig this month at Blues Brothers Con at the historic Joliet Prison in Illinois — and Aykroyd sees the venture as 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 that the music is real. The songs are real.”
