THE BLUES BROTHERS is a story of friendship and film, race and revival, rhythm and blues. The 1980 movie stands as a landmark of American cinema and popular culture: A glorious meeting of the nation's white and black musical traditions, a moment of rebirth for the legends of African-American music, and the crowning achievement of three iconic talents in television and cinema, comedic actors John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis. The Blues Brothers marked a paradigm shift in the comedy and musical genres of cinema, a passing of the torch to a young and restless generation of writers and performers raised on television, and the arrival of Chicago as a cinematic setting. Dismissed by critics and shunned by theater owners upon its release, The Blues Brothers matured into a cinema classic. One of cinema's great comedies, The Blues Brothers also offered a groundbreaking vision for a modern, urban musical. The Blues Brothers endures, too, as a symbol of Hollywood excess, the heady, coke-fuelled peak of a doomed artistic partnership.
THE BLUES BROTHERS chronicles the making of an iconic American film, and how the movie uses comedy to convey an important message about music, race and the American experience. Among other things, the book will reveal the true purpose of the mission that fueled the Blues Brothers enterprise: to revive the careers of America's greatest icons of rhythm and blues. This transcendent quest sets The Blues Brothers apart from the other fine comedy films of its era, securing a place for Aykroyd, Belushi and Landis in the turbulent history of race in America-in this case, as white Americans who leveraged their fame to raise the currency of great Black American musicians.
