Album of the Day

As legend would have it, “Joliet” Jake and Elwood Blues grew up in a Rock Island, Illinois orphanage, where they learned R&B music from a janitor. In reality, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd cooked up The Blues Brothers for a Saturday Night Live sketch and things grew from there, resulting in the 1978 debut BRIEFCASE FULL OF BLUES. The Atlantic collection was recorded live at Los Angeles’ Universal Amphitheatre with a backing band that included SNL’s Paul Shaffer, saxophonist Tom Scott and Booker T. & The M.G.’s mainstays Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn. Powered by energetic performances and a pair of Top 40 singles (“Soul Man” and “Rubber Biscuit”), the album topped the Billboard chart and eventually went double-Platinum. To celebrate Aykroyd’s 70th birthday, we’ll open up the BRIEFCASE FULL OF BLUES.