This Place Has Got Everything: 5 Songs That Show The Blues Brothers is a Central Text of American Music
This week's songs are from Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and James Brown
RIP Steve Cropper
Rock & Roll is full of unsung heroes and Steve Cropper was among them. They say you can really judge a musician’s talent by the notes they don’t play, and Cropper’s work as a guitarist is exceptional in its own way; it serves the song. Messing around while waiting for a singer to show up for a session, what became Booker T and the MGs recorded “Green Onions” in 2 takes. The song is a perfect example of the type of player he was—shape the groove and find your spots to hit on something short and sweet to dig that groove deeper. He would go on to be a central figure in the success of Stax Records as a session player, songwriter, and producer. If you’ve followed these pages, you’re aware of my love for Stax Records, especially the sound itself of the music. Steve Cropper was a major part of that. But it should be noted the guy played with everybody: Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh, Frank Black, Billy Gibbons, Etta James, Brian May, John Lennon, Rod Stewart, Dolly Parton, Wilson Pickett, Ringo Starr, Ann-Margret, the Staples Singers, John Prine, Wayne Newton, B.B. King, Levon Helm...that’s just a partial list. And as a proud Chicagoan, music fan, and movie lover, I believe the most prestigious credit to his name is as a member of the Blues Brothers Band, which I will use as the jumping off point for this week’s 5 songs. But before we do, here’s the bonus song in memoriam for the legendary Steve Cropper, who passed away this week at age 84.
Otis Redding - “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”
Otis Redding had blown out his voice and needed to adjust his singing style to mitigate further damage. In an effort to do so, he figured he would write material for himself, but didn’t know how to play an instrument. His friend and collaborator Steve Cropper gave him a guitar tuned to Open E major so that he could press his index finger over the whole fret to easily make some chords. Sitting on music promoter Bill Graham’s houseboat in San Francisco, Redding put together the first verse of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” with that guitar, which Cropper would ultimately finish. The limitations of the unusual tunings meant some chord progressions go unresolved, thus creating some interesting tension in the song itself.
Redding would never hear the final version of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” as he died, along with members of the Bar-Kays (also part of the Stax family), in a plane crash three days after the sessions took place. Seeking to capitalize on the event, Atlantic Records (which distributed Stax Records) asked for unreleased Redding material to put out, which forced Cropper to mix “Dock of the Bay” while grieving the shocking loss of his friends. It’s a heavy load to bear, and hard to imagine how difficult that must’ve been. But my god, what a tribute—it’s a testament to their shared musical talents, but also to what kind of human Cropper must’ve been.
“[Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn] and I always talked about everything. And one of the things we concluded was: that’s the most fun we ever had in our lives, was making that movie.”
- Steve Cropper, on The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers, is a celebrated comedy classic and cultural touchstone, especially within the Chicagoland area. But I don’t think it gets enough credit for its historical significance as a convergence point for nearly all of American Music in the 20th Century. So, with Steve Cropper’s passing, what better time than now to really dive into it…
Something I’ve been thinking about recently is not only how older movies being re-run consistently on TV established a connection to a shared past and contextualized the present. They have effectively merged with video games in now just being “screen time”, that connection is untethered. Streaming platforms create vast libraries of movies, TV shows, all focused on new titles. The endless options available also means people have more agency over what they put on. No one is forced to decide between three or four things, and if you don’t want any of those, go put something else on your tablet. With basic cable channels—your TBS, TNT, USA, AMC, and WGN—limiting your options, and often running the same batch of movies, multiple times per weekend, it was forced, repeated exposure. Most importantly for what I’m getting at here, is that given the movies were often between 5-20 years old, there was a reference point to things that happened, and were of cultural significance, before you were born. Two of the most celebrated major pop albums in the last few years—Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS—face this untethering head on. It’s as if they felt responsible as global superstars to lay breadcrumbs for their audience to trace back through history and reconnect with their culture in a new way; to explore the things that have come before you, maybe talk to your grandparents and elders, explore the art that resonated with them, dig up the old and make something new with it.
What 10 year old now would have any frame of reference for Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Isaac Hayes, John Lee Hooker, or Cab Calloway? In the 1990s, when The Blues Brothers was in regular rotation, there were probably a lot. It was on so often and made such an imprint that I can compile much of this entry not having seen the movie in a good 20 years or so. For any curious viewer, learning more about these artists provides an access point into the evolution of American music: Gospel, Rhythm & Blues, Country, Rock & Roll, Country & Western, Hip Hop, and Jazz. Within the context of the film, it offers many ways into the cultural history of the United States: the lasting implications of slavery and the Great Migration’s role in shaping modern urban America, Manifest Destiny, the excesses of law enforcement, white artists capitalizing on the innovations of Black musicians, cultural appropriation vs. appreciation, and the unfortunate existence of American Nazis.
How much of this was I aware of as kid watching the movie for the 10th time that month? None of it. But the repetition so deeply embedded the movie into my brain, I can practically play a musical version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with nearly any American musician and trace them, or their direct influences, through The Blues Brothers, and I haven’t seen it in over 20 years.
“Danny knows this is a bit of a joke, but John has no idea.” - Jim Downey
The Blues Brothers doesn’t just include these artists’ music as wallpaper, layered on the soundtrack like a half-assed playlist or “throwback” radio station. It also doesn’t delve into their back stories or offer a pedantic history lesson setting them up as legends. This was long before most of these artists had their own biopic, or the internet made their entire catalogues readily available. The movie offered a cultural context to showcase their talents. In many cases they’re playing side characters, placed in a situation that fits their persona. Effectively, they’re given the stage to win over new fans on their own terms. And if the role of the artist is to reflect their times, these artists didn’t just reflect their present, but carry history with them, and would go on to influence future generations.
Since I’m limited to 5 songs, I’d like to note two things: First, one of the film’s calling cards—“Sweet Home Chicago”—that is the de facto anthem of the greater metropolitan area, was originally written by Robert Johnson (under the pen name Woody Payne). His mythic status informs not just the blues, but effectively all of rock & roll. But enough words have been written about Johnson—the man and the myth. Second, the “Theme From Peter Gunn,” and “Rawhide” are used prominently in the movie but not performed by a featured artist, offers a gateway into both punk and classical music. While the Silencers covered “Peter Gunn” outright, the B-52s quoted the riff—all down strokes and attitude—in “Planet Claire.” Written by Henry Mancini, future film composer John Williams was the pianist on the track. Both composers wrote some of the most iconic movie scores ever (Williams most often in collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who does have a cameo in The Blues Brothers). The writers of “Rawhide” were both out of Vaudeville and would go on to write for film and TV. Lyricist “Ned Washington” would win an Oscar for “When You Wish Upon a Star.” I mention this, because film scores are the closest relationship most Americans have to classical music.
With that, here are 5 Songs that trace the past, present, and future of American music through artists featured in The Blues Brothers.
“People used to say I had forty suits and forty pairs of shoes. They were wrong. I had fifty suits and fifty pairs of shoes, with fifty pairs of pearl grey gloves to match.” - Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway - “Are You Hep to the Jive?”
Cab Calloway was a gifted performer from a young age. He was mentored by drummer Chick Webb in Baltimore before heading to Chicago for law school, where he picked up gigs performing in clubs. At the Sunset Cafe, he met Louis Armstrong, who influenced his scat singing style that he would ultimately make his trademark. The Cab Calloway Orchestra, which would fill in at the Cotton Club when Duke Ellington’s band was out on tour. Calloway wasn’t just a bandleader and singer, but a personality. His orchestra would broadcast live to radio from the Cotton Club, occasionally including appearances by Bing Crosby, among others. He would ultimately act, in The Singing Kid with Al Jolson, appearing in Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess and Hello, Dolly!, and would appear on The Ed Sullivan Show when TV arrived. As a mentee of Louis Armstrong and Chick Webb, and substitute for Duke Ellington, Calloway’s place in the history of jazz is very close to its center, particularly the Big Band era and the Harlem Renaissance. Calloway’s orchestra was a starting point for Dizzy Gillespie and Ben Webster; the former would go on to help popularize bebop, but Latin swing as well.
“Minnie the Moocher”—which he performs in The Blues Brothers—was the first recording by an African American to sell a million copies. While that may seem like a broken glass ceiling, cross-over success for Black artists in America was a flashpoint for a number of artists throughout the 20th century, and is still a factor today. The scat singing and jive talk that Calloway picked up from Armstrong would be one of his many trademarks that would inspire future icons like James Brown and Michael Jackson, and would also show up in hip hop. What is the first few bars of “Rappers Delight” but scat singing? Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun spoke of seeing Ellington and Calloway at the London Palladium as a kid being a formative experience. While Duke Ellington was known for a polished style, Calloway was more outlandish zoot suits, with wide brim hats and tails that nearly dragged on the floor. He also performed a dance move called the “gliding backstep”— a precursor to the moonwalk.
“Are You Hep to the Jive” keeps open passages of the Big Band swing, while Calloway displays his personality as he questions whether people can keep up with him. The whole thing sounds a bit basic. But consider the path Calloway cuts for himself: all swagger and bravado; questioning whether the audience can keep up with how cool and stylish he is. And if you have to think about it, the answer is most certainly “no.” How is this that different than Kanye’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothin” or Tyler, the Creator’s “Who Day Boy?”
“You can’t go no deeper than me and my guitar. I open my mouth, and it’s there. I get so deep the teardrops come into my eyes. That’s why I wear my dark glasses—so you won’t see the teardrops.” - John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker - “I Cover the Waterfront / Worried Life Blues” (Live)
In the 1870s, a young boy in Texas befriended his father’s farmhand—a former slave named Nat Blythe. The boy taught Blythe to read and write; Blythe taught the boy African American folk songs. Blythe would ultimately leave the farm to pursue a formal education, and the boy would spend his life seeking out and recording American folk music across the country. John Lomax, and ultimately his sons John Jr. and Alan Lomax compiled over 10,000 field recordings to build an archive of American folk music for the Library of Congress. Some of these recordings were of former slaves; some are names synonymous with Jazz, Blues, and Folk—Jelly Roll Morton, Son House, and Woody Guthrie. These recordings played a major role in driving the American Folk revival that gave us Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. And it was Lomax recordings of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf that British teens like the members of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin were obsessing over.
John Lee Hooker was the son of a sharecropper and preacher, who thought the blues was sinful music. Hooker learned guitar from his stepfather, and would go on to say that their styles were “identical.” While the Blues largely went electric—Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy—and can now mostly be characterized by big guitar solos and a little bit of showmanship, Hooker gets a lot of mileage out of a deceptively simple template that is firmly rooted in early Delta blues recordings. His guitar drives the beat, doesn’t move up the neck very much. That’s not to say he wasn’t adventurous—he recorded two albums with hippie blues band Canned Heat (who played at Woodstock). Further still, Hooker’s style is woven into the fabric of Southern Rock, most obviously as ZZ Top cribbed his famous hook for “La Grange.”
Hooker was part of the Great Migration, leaving the South for Detroit, where he worked at Ford. Once he was able to pick up his recording career, he would write and record under pseudonyms in order to run with multiple contracts at once.
“I Cover the Waterfront” was popularized by Billie Holiday, but has since been recorded by Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, Annie Lennox, Chris Thile, and many others. While primarily known for his charging boogie blues, he gives space to this ballad that holds the weight of the blues. Hooker released a gorgeous live version with Van Morrison and Booker T. in 1991. But as with the blues players in Lomax’s original recordings, Hooker is at is best on his own. So here he is performing it in a medley with “Worried Life Blues,” pretty much like he was in his Blue Brothers appearance—outside, with a guitar and microphone—at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1983, recorded by Alan Lomax.
“Being the Queen is not all about singing, and being a diva is not all about singing. It has much to do with your service to people. And your social contributions to your community and your civic contributions as well.” - Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin - “Take My Hand, Precious Lord / You’ve Got A Friend” (Live)
When I was in high school, I worked at a summer concert venue that would bring in a lot of legacy pop acts, mixed in with prestigious classical performers, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Two performers were fixtures on the calendar: Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin. It was something of a joke to other parking lot attendants that every year, her purple and gray limo with the personalized license plate would pull into the wrong lot and ask for directions to the artist entrance. She had a personalized limo, typically sold out the venue, performed in a fur coat in the middle of August; she was the Queen of Soul—a name given to her in Chicago by DJ Pervis Spann—music royalty. But even late into her career, she was known to insist on being paid in cash, up front, before she went on stage. And she would keep the money in a handbag that would stay within sight while she performed. No matter how far you go, you never forget where you came from.
Her father C.L. Franklin was born in the Mississippi Delta, but earned national attention as a Baptist minister for recording his performative, musical sermons. This attention meant she had access to a Who’s Who of Black artists and thinkers performing in her living room. Nat “King” Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and gospel singers Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson. She was friends with Sam Cooke and Smokey Robinson from a young age. Ultimately, she bypassed an offer from Motown Records to sign with John Hammond at Columbia—the same executive whose roster of artists include everyone from Count Basie and Benny Goodman to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Russell, and Stevie Ray Vaughn—where she was positioned as a jazz singer. It was her pivot to Atlantic Records, working with Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, where she brought the style and passion she learned from church into R&B. Franklin is connected to the 70s singer-songwriter movement and Brill Building pop by one of her biggest hits—“You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)”— as it was written for her by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Her influence can be heard in everyone from Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera, to Janis Joplin and Mary J. Blige.
That her voice was so strong afforded her the ability to sing from a position of power at a time and place where not only Black people, but women were fighting for equality and basic rights. In the face of such dynamics, one has to lean on faith and hope for a better future. I can only surmise that that is why Gospel music is so intertwined with the Civil Rights Movement. Her 1972 live album Amazing Grace is as pure of a Gospel album you will find. She’s accompanied by Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir. It was recorded live at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church over two days. Here, she creates a medley of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” with “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” a Gospel song in which writer Thomas Dorsey incorporated elements from a Protestant hymn dating back to the 17th Century. Dorsey wrote a number of songs for Mahalia Jackson. On drums is Bernard Purdie, who has credits ranging from Miles Davis to Steely Dan and Todd Rundgren.
“It’s like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good.” - Ray Charles
Ray Charles - “Your Cheatin’ Heart”
Ray Charles impact on Gospel, R&B, Blues, Soul, Jazz, the Great American Songbook, and on to Hip Hop is a given. But as a kid, the only time Ray Charles’ mom would let him stay up late was to listen to the Grand Ole Opry, solidifying his love for “Country & Western” music. Charles even claimed to have played in Hillbilly bands early in his career. He saw himself as a musician who would play any song that he could find his way into, and could make something that felt genuine. But it was something of a shock to have a black man playing “Country & Western” music in the 1960s, even if they had already established themselves with a successful career. There was probably a reaction similar to that of Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion—is he serious? But back then, an artist’s established genre, and race, were factors in what got made, where it got sold, and to whom. Since at least the mid-2000s, country music has been lifting elements from hip hop and R&B, making the cross-over less puzzling. Charles’ record label tried to talk him out of it, and pockets of Country radio didn’t support Charles’ album. But the wider industry backed him, and expanded the Country audience in the process. Now more than ever, Country music has proven to be more cultural than regional, and that culture is not typically a big tent. Look no further than Nashville’s reaction to Cowboy Carter: the Grammys carved out a Best “Traditional” Country Music Album category after Beyonce won. However, Charles did play it more traditional, recording songs by Bob Wills, Johnny Cash, and Buck Owens, among many others.
One of my favorite songs by either Ray Charles or Willie Nelson is their collaboration on “Seven Spanish Angels.” But on “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” he is taking on the central figure of the genre: Hank Williams. Working with conductor Marty Paich (Peggy Lee, Barbara Streisand, Andy Williams, Mahalia Jackson), to arrange the song as a sweeping ballad. Charles takes out the bitterness and sting of Williams’ original, and acknowledges that “hurt people hurt people,” the pain and sadness of the betrayal is shared. Ray Charles was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022.
“Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I’m saying? You hear all the rappers, 90% of their music is me.” - James Brown
James Brown - “Further On Up the Road”
James Brown’s role in super-charging R&B, creating the template for Funk and Hip Hop is a given. He is the most sampled artist of all time, which fundamentally changed the concept of what constitutes “dance music.” From early Hip Hop (Eric B & Rakim, Public Enemy) to modern superstars (Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator) and everyone in between; Pop icons (Justin Timberlake, Madonna) and avant-garde electronic artists (Aphex Twin, Massive Attack), Brown’s music, and that of his backing bands, has been dropped and chopped into thousands of songs. In addition to his music, Michael Jackson looked to Brown’s showmanship for inspiration. His style and general take-no-bullshit attitude was replicated and celebrated in Blaxploitation films, where Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes provided iconic soundtracks. Like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, or Benny Goodman, James Brown was a drill sergeant of a bandleader. Whether it was the James Brown Orchestra, the Famous Flames, or the J.B.s, musicians he’s played would go on to make significant contributions and expand on his ideas. Fred Wesley, Bobby Byrd, and Bootsy Collins would go on to work with everyone from Trombone Shorty and Keith Richards to Garbage and Fatboy Slim. Bootsy Collins would help George Clinton take Parliament Funkadelic into the stratosphere, laying the groundwork for Prince. The Talking Heads included Funkadelic member Bernie Worrell among other disco and funk performers in their backing band for the seminal concert film Stop Making Sense, thus connecting James Brown to the CBGB scene in three degrees of separation. His influence running wide and deep, his own inspiration—Gospel music and the Black Church—was made explicit with this role as an excitable reverend in The Blues Brothers. “Further on Up the Road” has a funky groove that swings and runs along a Blues scale, similar to Stevie Wonder’s best work. With backing vocals and hand claps, it sets a loose party vibe, like Sly & the Family Stone. It’s a perfect showcase for Brown’s vocal talents, and that of his killer band.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: