Blues Brothers Soundtrack

Made in America is the third album by The Blues Brothers. The second live album by the band, it was released in December 1980 as a followup to their hit film released that year, The Blues Brothers. The album did not fare as well, commercially or critically as their previous two albums, 1978's Briefcase Full of Blues and The Blues Brothers: Music from the Soundtrack. Made in America peaked at No. 49 on the Billboard chart and the single, "Who's Making Love", just cracked the Top 40 at No. 39. It was the band's last album with lead singer "Joliet" Jake Blues (John Belushi, who died in 1982).

It isn't exactly difficult to scoff at the Blues Brothers – beginning your musical career as a sketch on Saturday Night Live is not the best way to develop artistic credibility, and while Elwood Blues wasn't too shabby a harp player, his brother, Joliet Jake, sang only marginally better than that guy who used to impersonate Joe Cocker on late-night television. But no one ever bought a Blues Brothers album expecting a life-changing musical experience – these guys were there to put on a show, and putting on a great show is just what they did. It helped that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi obviously loved the music, and they knew how to put together a killer band (any fan with the vision to hire Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Steve Jordan, and Matt "Guitar" Murphy" to cover classic blues and R&B deserves credit for good taste, if nothing else)…

The title of The Blues Brothers Complete pretty much says it all; the double-disc, 35-track collection contains everything Jake and Elwood Blues recorded during the peak of their career. The catch is that the compilation was only released by EastWest/Atlantic's Australian division, therefore, it's hard to find outside of Australia. But, for hardcore fans, it's worth tracking down since it has every track from Briefcase Full of Blues, the soundtrack to The Blues Brothers (including the selections sung by Cab Calloway, James Brown, and Aretha Franklin), and Made in America, plus "I Ain't Got You," which was only on The Best of the Blues Brothers, and "From the Bottom," which was the B-side of the "Soul Man" single. In other words, it's everything…

The Holmes Brothers are certainly one of the best blues discoveries of the 90s. Rough, gutsy, and almost unbelievably funky, they make music that seems steeped in the energy, dust, litter, smells and fumes of Brooklyn's neighbourhoods.
The brothers are Wendell and Sherman Holmes and Popsy Dixon (the latter the owner of the best falsetto voice since Al Green and the Reverend Claude Jeter), and this powerful, emotional, joyful and rocking album is their fifth. The songs, originally written and recorded for the film Lotto Land, stand proudly on their own - although if you do see the film you’ll understand how well they fit the bitter sweet story of the development of the two different relationships and a missing multi-million dollar lottery ticket…

Paul A. Rothchild produced the final Janis Joplin studio album, Pearl, as well as many a Doors disc, and the late producer was the perfect guy to tackle this tribute to Joplin featuring "The Divine Miss M" as "Pearl"/"The Rose." In March of 1980, the version of "When a Man Loves a Woman" from this 1979 film soundtrack went Top 35, and Midler's biggest hit followed her Oscar nomination, but it was a well-produced version of the title track, different from the album, which went Top Three, the gold single the biggest of her six hits up to this point in time.

This soundtrack to the movie features an astonishing array of blues artists from three generations. Recorded during one long night at NYC's Radio City Music Hall on Feb. 7, 2003, the electricity is in the air and on stage. While it may not have been the finest blues show in history, the collection of founding fathers such as David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Buddy Guy, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Larry Johnson, Hubert Sumlin, Solomon Burke, and the ubiquitous B.B. King along with their spiritual offspring (Gregg Allman, John Fogerty, and Steven Tyler) and some usual suspects like Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, and Keb' Mo', makes it arguably the most significant blues session ever captured on film. Beginning acoustic, the double disc builds momentum and volume as we hear the blues mutate to electric and finally hip-hop with Chuck D. exploding on a rap version of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom".