What the 'mission from God' really was for 'The Blues Brothers' movie

The following is adapted from “The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic,” published March 19 by Atlantic Monthly Press. The author is Daniel de Visé, a personal finance reporter for USA TODAY. 

Even casual fans of “The Blues Brothers” know the scene.

A patrolman pulls over Jake and Elwood Blues in their Bluesmobile. The officer keys in the tag number and divines that Elwood’s license is suspended for 56 moving violations and 116 parking tickets. The patrolman orders the boys out of the car. Instead, Elwood speeds off.

“They’re not gonna catch us,” he tells Jake. “We’re on a mission from God.”

The first half of that line came from Dan Aykroyd’s original script for “The Blues Brothers,” a 324-page tome that he delivered to producers wrapped in the cover of an L.A. telephone book.

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The second half came from John Landis, the director. He added it in a winking nod to Aykroyd, whose passion for rhythm and blues had inspired the film’s true mission.

In search of the true 'mission from God'

I grew up with “The Blues Brothers,” saw the film a dozen times and thought I knew it pretty well. Yet, I had never heard the story of the real mission from God. Landis told it to me in a 2020 interview. It inspired me to write a book about “The Blues Brothers.”

In the final script, and in the Blues Brothers film, the “mission from God” refers to the goofy central plot. Jake and Elwood Blues set out to raise $5,000 to pay a delinquent tax bill for the Catholic orphanage that reared them.

Catholic orphanages don’t pay taxes. Then again, quite a lot in “The Blues Brothers” defied logic. The Bluesmobile defied physics. And, hey, this was comedy.

The real mission from God was something entirely different.

Landis added the line to the script to honor Aykroyd’s quest to revive the careers of the faded icons of rhythm and blues.

At the close of the 1970s, the titans of classic R&B were struggling. Disco ruled the charts. Arena rock ruled the amphitheaters. Aretha Franklin’s 1979 album “La Diva” stalled at 146 on the Billboard 200 album chart. James Brown’s “The Original Disco Man” reached 152.

Aykroyd had grown up in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, a worshipful acolyte of rhythm and blues. He had seen Sam & Dave perform in Montreal at the 1967 World’s Fair.

In 1975, Aykroyd joined the founding cast of “Saturday Night,” later renamed “Saturday Night Live.” He became best friends with John Belushi, a fellow comedian and musician from suburban Chicago. Together, they worked up a blues act.

The Blues Brothers debuted on “Saturday Night Live” in April 1978. The act evoked the great blues duos of the 1960s, most notably Sam & Dave, who had scored monster hits with “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin.’” Black suits and hats linked the white bluesmen with the R&B greats of old, men like Cab Calloway and John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, impeccably dressed.

Over the summer of 1978, Aykroyd and Belushi built the Blues Brothers into a top-drawer R&B touring act, playing songs by Willie Mabon and Big Joe Turner and fronting an all-star band, featuring guitar legends Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Steve “The Colonel” Cropper.

A Blues Brothers film would capitalize on the success of the band, whose debut album topped the Billboard charts, and on the budding superstardom of Belushi, who had broken out with a performance in the 1978 comedy film “Animal House,” playing Bluto, a volcanic blend of Harpo Marx and Cookie Monster.

Dan Aykroyd and John Landis shaped 'The Blues Brothers' into an action-comedy musical

Together, scriptwriters Aykroyd and Landis shaped the film into an action-comedy musical.

They recruited Cab Calloway, the swing-era big-band great, to play Curtis, elegant mentor to Elwood and Jake.

For an outdoor sequence on Chicago’s famed Maxwell Street, they hired John Lee Hooker, the urban blues legend.

They enlisted Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, to play Matt “Guitar” Murphy’s long-suffering wife.

Ray Charles, the Genius, signed on to play the pawnshop dealer who sells the Blues Brothers their gear.

They tapped James Brown, Godfather of Soul, to play the singing preacher whose sermon inspires Jake’s religious epiphany: Get the band back together.

Had filmmakers gotten their way, “The Blues Brothers” would have featured even more of the greats. Aykroyd and Landis approached B.B. King, King of the Blues; Little Richard, an architect of rock and roll; and Muddy Waters, Chicago’s greatest bluesman.

King’s manager waved them off: Unlike most of the others, B.B. was booked. Little Richard was too busy pursuing his own mission from God. Muddy Waters signed on, but he fell ill on the eve of filming. The production could not wait.

Aretha Franklin, James Brown and other R&B greats transformed 'The Blues Brothers'

The musical numbers transformed “The Blues Brothers” from a very funny film into a cinema treasure.

In 2010, the Catholic Church would declare the film a “Catholic classic,” one of a dozen films recommended for viewing by the flock, a list that included “The Ten Commandments” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” A mission from God, indeed.

In 2020, the Library of Congress would induct “The Blues Brothers” into its National Film Registry, marked for preservation.

“The Blues Brothers” would become one of the first big Hollywood films to earn more overseas ($58 million) than in the United States ($57 million), a success fed by the universal appeal of American rhythm and blues.

Despite all those accolades, however, the question of race complicates the Blues Brothers legend.

The Blues Brothers band was two white guys fronting a mostly white ensemble that played historically Black music.

Even before the film, some critics greeted the Blues Brothers as an act of cultural appropriation. In a 1979 issue of "Rolling Stone," Dave Marsh theorized that the presence of Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn, the white Stax masters, was “the only thing keeping the Blues Brothers from slopping over into racist parody.”

That critique resurfaced with the release of the film in June 1980.

“Belushi and Aykroyd doubtless intended to pay homage to the great Black performers who have inspired them,” David Denby wrote in "New York," “but the homage often comes close to insult and outright rip-off.”

Yet, the performers themselves seemed to disagree.

“As far as commercial interest in R&B is concerned, John helped get the ball rolling again,” Ray Charles told "Rolling Stone," speaking of Belushi. “Man, we owe him.”

“The film was made with a lot of love and gave us all another chance,” James Brown told "People." “I hate to admit it, but these young people never heard of me. They come to the movies and see James Brown and Aretha Franklin. If they like us, maybe they’ll come hear us play.”

Mission from God, accomplished

They did. The Godfather went from half-empty rooms to packed houses. Franklin reaped a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In December 1980, “Saturday Night Live” featured musical performances by Aretha Franklin and James Brown on consecutive weeks. Neither artist had done the show before, and both were riding high.

I am pretty sure that I first saw “The Blues Brothers” at the Parkway theater on Clark Street in Chicago, one of those places where you could watch a double feature for a dollar or two, probably around 1982.

I could have walked over to Rose Records the very next day and bought a copy of a Blues Brothers album. But I didn’t. I bought a copy of “The Best of Sam & Dave,” a vinyl version of the cassette Elwood and Jake had played in the Bluesmobile. I think that’s what the Brothers would have wanted.