The Blues Brothers' 1979 Prediction

Who can forget the words of Dan Aykroyd as he introduced the Blues Brothers on their 1979 live album "Briefcase Full of Blues?" Tom Scott and the rest of the top notch horn section had just played, and while Steve Jordan (drums) and Duck Dunn (bass) kept the beat going on "I Can't Cut You Loose" he told us

Well, here it is the late 1970s, going on 1985.
You know, so much of the music you hear today is preprogrammed electronic disco, you never get a chance to hear master bluesmen practicing their craft anymore.
By the year 2006, the music known today as The Blues will exist only in the classical records department of your public library...

Fortunately, that did not come to be. The Blues is alive and well, and preprogrammed electronic disco, while it may not be dead, is certainly not the only thing you can hear nowadays. Perhaps Aykroyd and his partner John Belushi deserve a bit of the credit for this. The Blues Brothers, first on "Saturday Night Live," then on record, then in their films, introduced a generation of us to real Blues and R and B. Some will no doubt denounce them as commercial or a couple of white guys ripping off the old bluesmen who never got the credit they deserved. Well, I'll agree about the lack of credit. But I'll also concur with no less a blues genius as Steve Cropper, who remarked that Belushi was one damn good performer. He also showed a lot of kids that soul music could mean more than Barry White, and Blues tunes were not only done by Hot Tuna.