You’re in Chicago.
Your work is done, you’ve checked out of the hotel, and you have plenty of time to kill before your flight.
What do you do?
You put on your Sherlock Holmes cap and search The Windy City for traces of its favorite sons: Jake and Elwood Blues.
*****
My boss called me into his office. “I really need you to do me a favor. Can you go to Chicago?” The task at hand was a quick visit to a possible vendor.
I answered quickly before he could reconsider. “I’ll get out there ASAP.”
It’s not hard to talk me into going to the Windy City. You really don’t need to talk me into it at all. It’s one of the Great Cities, the Monster of the Midway, a toddlin’ town. To coin a phrase, it’s my kind of town… as long as it’s not winter.
A few days later, I wasn’t far from my hotel when I noticed a street sign… and the excited voice of Elwood Blues (Dan Ackroyd) suddenly popped into my head, proclaiming, “This is definitely Lower Wacker Drive!”
Images of an old, beat-up 1970’s police cruiser speeding down the street, running all the red lights, played in my mind while I sat waiting for green.
*****
My task accomplished, the next morning I wandered the downtown streets. My return flight was later in the afternoon, and I had already been upgraded to first-class, so I didn’t have any desire to change my flight for an earlier one.
I was nursing my coffee when deja vu hit me once again.
“I have been here before,” the voice inside whispered.
“No, I haven’t!” another, more rational voice — mine — insisted.
But I HAD seen this before, didn’t I? Maybe a hundred times. I had strolled into Daley Plaza in front of the Cook County Building, where Elwood’s repurposed police cruiser finally gave up the ghost.
“See?” the subconscious voice triumphantly prodded, rubbing it in. “You know where you are now, don’t you?”
The Blues Brothers.
Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood, the quintessential Chicagoans in the quintessential Chicago movie. Their mark is still all over this town.
I went right back to the hotel and made some plans.
*****
I had remembered reading that the Dixie Square Mall, where the incredible indoor car chase was filmed, was abandoned shortly before the movie was filmed. It remained vacant ever since, and was finally demolished the year before my visit. Scratch that one.
What I really wanted to see was Bob’s Country Bunker, the location of perhaps my favorite scene in The Blues Brothers. I imagined that the old roadhouse was still out there just off the highway, somewhere outside of the city, still bringing in the truckers and the rednecks for some “Country AND Western.”
Alas, a little internet search work (check out www.bluesbrotherscentral.com) revealed that Bob’s was just a creation of Hollywood, a soundstage built for the movie.
Damn. I was hoping to play there someday. Thank God for the chicken wire.
Did all of my other favorites scenes also happen on soundstages, which were afterwards dismantled? Was anything else still left out there?
Apparently, there was, and before my flight, I set out to see as much as I could.
*****
I found the “Triple Rock Baptist Church” first.
Known in real life as the Pilgrim Baptist Church of South Chicago, where the Rev. Cheophus James, so memorably played by the late Godfather of Soul James Brown, inspired Jake to reform the band.
It has survived both fire and apathy over the years. I first saw it in my rear view mirror, and seeing that familiar façade gave me goosebumps. It looks exactly like it did in the movie.
So does the “Mister Man House,” Jake and Elwood’s first stop on their “Mission from God” to get their old band back together.
It sits in Cicero, Illinois, just outside of the Chicago city limits. A quiet residential street just a few blocks from heavy manufacturing, the good folk of Cicero eyed me curiously as I parked my car and snapped photos of 1623 S. 51st Court.
I lingered for a few moments, hoping that the landlady would run out waving an envelope and exclaiming, “Mister Man! Oh Mister Man!” She did not. I couldn’t help but wonder if whoever was living in 1623 was even aware of its past life.
“Ray’s Music Exchange” was, and still is, a pawnshop: Shelley’s Loan Co.
The colorful mural of blues greats like Muddy Waters and B.B. King on the side of the building, painted just for the movie, remain but has faded over time. No dancers materialized in East 47th St to shake their tail feathers in front of it; nevertheless, it was there that I most strongly felt the spirit of the Blues Brothers.
The mural stands as a reminder of that joyful day when a community danced in the street to the great Ray Charles.
If you watch “The Blues Brothers” and don’t have the urge to sing along, let alone jump up and dance, you may need to check your pulse.
“The Blues Brothers” was nothing if not an iconic movie.
Some 40 years after its release it remains a cultural and historical document: introducing, re-introducing, immortalizing, and humanizing, on film, the Mothers and Fathers of Rock and Roll, Blues and Soul. Seminal performers like Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin (“Don’t you blaspheme in here!”), John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, and legendary session players like band guitarists Steve Cropper and Matt “Guitar” Murphy, and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, were reverently acknowledged and honored.
Today, a generation that never heard of Aretha Franklin or James Brown, watches “The Blues Brothers,” and sees them on the screen, singing and dancing, and maybe they understand why Jake and Elwood and so many millions of others loved their music so much.
Jake and Elwood lived for the music. They lived it every hour of every day, living in squalor, running from The Law, just to listen to Louis Jordan on the turntable, or Sam and Dave on the 8-track, and have another chance to play their music for the masses.
They even went to jail for it. And in their movie they paid their respects to the music they loved so much and to those who created it.
*****
I headed back to O’Hare, and turned in my rental car.
I took a step back when I slammed the driver’s door shut, and was just a little bit disappointed that the car didn’t collapse into a heap.
*****
Epilogue — The Flight Home
The Men Who Belong in First Class eyed me with a touch of disdain.
I was standing at the front of the first Class line wearing shorts and sandals (how did HE get into first-class?), while two elderly black ladies, one in a wheel chair, boarded the plane.
I didn’t mind. I had just completed my own Mission from God.
Shortly after takeoff, I found myself engaged in conversation with those same two ladies, who were sitting in the row right in front of me. During the polite conversation, one of them asked me what I did. I answered that I worked for a truck fleet by day, but was a guitarist at night.
This provoked much interest. They sat a little more sideways in their seats and peered back at me, eyes bright.
“You’re a guitar player?” the lady on the left asked.
“I am,” I replied proudly, “I play in bands, all over New Jersey, Philly, New York City, Atlantic City…”
She cackled and clapped her hands together. “We’re musicians too, we’re the Staple Singers. I’m Yvonne and this is my sister Mavis.”
The Staple Singers, giants of R&B, gospel, and soul music, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees, were sitting right in front of me.
I was ecstatic. “I know who you are! I have “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself” on my iPod!”
Mavis and Yvonne looked at each and smiled; somehow, I felt like I had made their day. Brother and sisters in music, we shook hands, and talked music until the wheels touched the ground in Philly, while The Men Who Belong in First Class gazed in wonder at the three of us.
Somewhere out there, Jake and Elwood smiled and nodded their approval, and passed the bottle, while the music played on…
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