I love The Blues Brothers, as all true Chicagoans do. But… what do you call the genre of music they play in the film? Despite the surname of the brothers, most of the songs do not qualify as “blues” (although a few do). If you were to put a genre name on the entire collection of music, what would be the best term for it? Thanks, gang!
PS - bonus question: how to best program a Pandora station to play similar music, short of just seeding it with songs from the soundtrack?
Blues, and the other musical idioms directly influenced by it, like gospel, country and swing.
R&B and/or soul music is what I’d call it. Except that the R&B name has been appropriated by appalling shite in recent years and people under the age of 30 probably wouldn’t know that R&B used to mean music that didn’t suck.
Generally speaking, “Rhythm & Blues”.
Also, the blues has a number of sub-genres. For example, there’s Chicago Blues, Memphis Blues, Kansas City Blues, Jazz Blues, and Jump Blues. (Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” number is a good example of the latter.)
FYI, Rhapsody characterizes their music as “Electric Blues”. Never heard that term before.
On edit: I see it’s listed as one of the sub-genres on NDP’s link. And from the description, it fits in there pretty well.
Electric Blues is the blues played with electrified and amplified instruments as opposed to the blues played with acoustic instruments (e.g., Robert Johnson).
Edit: I see you got the link in my previous post.
I can live with that.
Most of the music on the soundtrack, IMHO, falls under the definition of “soul” - Aretha, James Brown, Ray Charles and Sam & Dave, with the latter duo being the direct inspiration for the Blues Brothers characters.
Not only are there many kinds of blues, there are many brands of soul/R & B. A lot of people seem to think Motown defined soul music in the Sixties, but there were a LOT of great soul acts that never recorded for Motown- and several of those acts ended up either influencing the Blues Brothers, performing with them, or appearing in their movie.
Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin are among those soul legends who never recorded for Motown and who appeared in the movie.
Memphis had a huge soul scene that was unrelated to anything Motown was doing. Many of Memphis’ best soul artists were signed to the Stax label, and the Stax stable of artists was a huge influence on Aykroyd and Belushi. Sam and Dave were probably Stax’s biggest act, and their old song “Soul Man” was the Blues Brothers’ first hit.
Stax had a stable of outstanding composers (most notably Isaac Hayes, who WROTE “Soul Man”) and session musicians. The best known Stax musicians were the guys who formed the band Booker T & the MGs. Two of those guys, Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn, were in the Blues Brothers band. Cropper and Dunn actually played on both the Blues Brothers’ “Soul Man” AND on the original by Sam and Dave.
That movie features both kinds of music. Country and Western.
Soul, if anything.
I still remember a review I read when the movie was released: “These guys aren’t really brothers, but then, this isn’t really blues”.
mmm
I have a distinct memory of Dan Akroyd’s voice introducing themselves as a “Rhythm and Blues” band.
And both versions have the singer yelling, “Play it, Steve!” before the solo.
Thanks for all the input, gang! That helps a lot.
We got both kinds, we got Country and Western.
That’s for guitarist Steve Cropper, who played in both versions, as did bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn.
Include Booker T & the MGs, who were the Stax house band and backed many of their artists.
Roughly speaking, rhythm & blues covers the music in the film. Cab Calloway was a swing musician, Louis Jordan (heard on the record Elwood puts on in his room) was jump blues, James Brown sings a black gospel song, but normally his music would be classified as soul or funk. John Lee Hooker does electric blues. But everything falls under the wide umbrella of rhythm & blues. It’s similar to how Ralph Stanley, George Strait, Gram Parsons, Roy Acuff, and Keith Urban all fall under the umbrella of “country music”.
Yeah, I would’ve just called it Stax, Memphis R&B or Memphis Soul.
Good stuff.
“Sweet Home Chicago,” notably, is blues.