The Original Blues Brothers Band

Bio

The Original Blues Brothers Band had a particular debut compared to the majority of renowned bands, but it is surely among the most interesting. In 1978 Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi performed in Saturday Night Live! as the Blues Brothers and, thanks to the enormous success of the sketch, they transformed it into a real musical project which would be responsible for the introduction of soul and blues to entire generations.

The band line-up was chosen carefully by Aykroyd and Belushi to accompany the founding duo in the cinematic cult of 1980, The Blues Brothers, directed by John Landis. They chose Lou “Blue Lou” Marini (saxophone), Tom Malone (saxophone and trombone), Steve Cropper (guitar),  Donald “Duck” Dunn (drums) and Matt “Guitar” Murphy (guitar). Between 1978 and 1980 they recorded and published two live albums, Briefcase Full of Blues (1978) and Made in America (1980), followed by The Best of the Blues Brothers in 1981, which consolidated their enormous success achieved in only three years.

The untimely death of John Belushi in 1982 marked the start of an interruption period of musical production by the band. The break increased, even more, the legendary aura surrounding the band, and in 1989 Cropper, Dunn, Murphy, and the other members reformed the band and embarked on a successful world tour.

In 1992 The Original Blues Brothers Band published Red White and Blues, a musical project with R&B sounds typical of the iconic group, which saw the participation of Aykroyd (credited as “Elwood Blues”) on the song “Red, White & Blues”.

In 1995, at the event in memory of the 46th birthday of John Belushi, The Original Blues Brothers Band met the singer-songwriter, icon of Italian blues, Zucchero Fornaciari. The encounter gave life to a collaboration consisting of a concert, which saw the Italian icon and the band on the same stage, and the participation of The Blues Brothers in the “Per Colpa di Chi?” video.

The real artistic inspiration of the band comes out during live performances. It’s for this reason that The Original Blues Brothers Band dedicates itself mainly to concerts, performing on the most famous stage of the world: we can recall the Olympia Theatre performance in Paris from which the seats had to be removed to let the public dance freely, but also the performance at the Pistoia Blues Festival and their participation at the 54th edition of the Festival di Sanremo in 2004 where they performed “È la musica” together with Andrea Mingardi.

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