The Blues Brothers

The Blues Brothers, formally, variously The Blues Brothers' Show Band and Revue and The Blues Brothers' Rhythm and Blues Revue, are an American blues and rhythm and blues revivalist band founded in 1976 by comedy actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live. Belushi and Aykroyd, in character as lead vocalist "Joliet" Jake Blues (named after Joliet Prison) and harmonica player/backing vocalist Elwood Blues (named after the Elwood Ordnance Plant, which made TNT and grenades during World War II), fronted the band, which was composed of well-known and respected musicians. The Blues Brothers first appeared on Saturday Night Live on January 17, 1976. The band made its second appearance as the musical guest on the April 22, 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live. They made their third and final appearance on November 18, 1978.

The band began to take on a life beyond television, releasing an album, Briefcase Full of Blues, in 1978, and then having a Hollywood film, The Blues Brothers, created around its characters in 1980.

Blues

Blues is a genre and musical form that originated in African-American communities in the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in traditional African music, combined with European American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. The blue notes (or "worried notes") which are often thirds or fifths which are flatter in pitch than in other music styles, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect called a groove.

Blues as a genre possesses other characteristics such as lyrics, bass lines, and instruments. The lyrics of early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the so-called AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating troubles experienced within African American society.

Dan Aykroyd

Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM (/ˈækrɔɪd/; born July 1, 1952) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and musician. He is known for being an original member of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" on Saturday Night Live, as Elwood Blues of The Blues Brothers (with John Belushi), and as Ray Stantz in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989).

He is also an entrepreneur, having co-founded the music venue chain House of Blues in 1992, and the vodka brand Crystal Head Vodka in 2007.

In 1990, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy.

Early life

Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952, at the Ottawa General Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He grew up in the Canadian capital, where his father, Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd, a civil engineer, worked as a policy adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. His mother, Lorraine Hélène (née Gougeon), was a secretary. His mother was of French Canadian descent and his father of English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, and French ancestry. His brother, Peter, also became a comedy actor. Aykroyd was born with syndactyly, or webbed toes, which was revealed in the movie Mr. Mike's Mondo Video and in a short film on Saturday Night Live titled "Don't Look Back In Anger." He was also born with heterochromia – his right eye is blue and his left eye is brown.

John Belushi

John Adam Belushi (/bəˈluːʃi/; January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982) was an American comedian, actor, and musician. He is best known for his "intense energy and raucous attitude" which he displayed as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, in his role in the 1978 film Animal House and in his recordings and performances as one of The Blues Brothers.

During his career he had a close personal and artistic partnership with fellow SNL actor and writer Dan Aykroyd whom he met while they were both working at Chicago's Second City comedy club.

Belushi died on the morning of March 5, 1982 at the age of 33 in Hollywood, California, specifically at the Chateau Marmont, after being injected with a mixture of cocaine and heroin, known as a "speedball", which led to combined drug intoxication. He was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on April 1, 2004.

Early life

Belushi's mother, Agnes Demetri (Samaras), was the daughter of Albanian immigrants, and his father, Adam Anastos Belushi, was an Albanian immigrant from Qytezë. Born in Humboldt Park, a neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, John was raised in Wheaton, a suburb west of Chicago, along with his three siblings: younger brothers Billy and Jim, and sister Marian. Belushi was raised in the Albanian Orthodox Church and attended Wheaton Central High School, where he met his future wife, Judith Jacklin.

Brother

A Brother is the male offspring of one's parent.

Overview

The term brother comes from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰréh₂tēr, which becomes Latin frater, of the same meaning. Sibling warmth, or sibling affect between male siblings has been correlated to some more negative effects. In pairs of brothers higher sibling warmth is related to more risk taking behaviour although risk taking behaviour is not related to sibling warmth in any other type of sibling pair. The cause of this phenomenon in which sibling warmth is only correlated with risk taking behaviours in brother pairs still is unclear. This finding does, however, suggest that although sibling conflict is a risk factor for risk taking behaviour, sibling warmth does not serve as a protective factor. Some studies suggest that girls having an older brother delays the onset of menarche by roughly one year.

Brotherhood