Ever since donning the iconic black hat, suit and shades of Elwood Blues in John Landis’ 1980 blockbuster The Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd has been irrevocably associated with blues music. It’s a situation which could be painfully frustrating if the actor in question were not such a dyed-in-the-wool and well-informed hardcore fan of the genre. Catching up with Dan on a visit to the UK back in 2013, we asked him to choose his top 10 blues records. But he refused… and chose 11…
Howlin’ Wolf – Evil
“You can’t get any deeper into the blues than Chester Burnett. I got to see him a dozen times when I was growing up in Ottawa, Canada, and Evil showcases his voice beautifully. It’s a haunting, mysterious track, and my favourite blues record.
“Although he was a very physically imposing man, he was always nice to us kids when we got the chance to go backstage to talk to him. I guess because he knew that we were the up-and-coming fanbase reviving his career.”
Jimi Hendrix Experience – Red House
“Hendrix really is a blues man, and touching that vein the way he did, he was able to cut a classically structured blues track but spin it out in a way only Hendrix, with his guitar skills, could. Red House is a great example of his work and a tribute to blues music, filtered through Hendrix. While retaining a terrific respect for the blues form, his guitar was always innovative and didn’t sound like anybody else.”
John Lee Hooker – The Healer
“A beautiful, wonderful guitar and a great collaboration with Carlos Santana, a great use of John’s voice on a soothing, romantic song, just terrific.This was recorded near the end of his career and he played until he was into his 80s. I remember seeing him at The House of Blues in Anaheim and he just tore the roof off the place.
“It was great to get him into The Blues Brothers. I wish he’d been in it more, it was a little fight I had with [director John] Landis, but he was in the Maxwell Street scene before we go into the restaurant, that’s John Lee Hooker and Big Walter Horton playing there.”
Junior Wells with Buddy Guy – Messin’ With The Kid
“Great collaboration, great artists, wonderful harp work, Junior at his best and a wonderful, staccato blues song, not exactly in a traditional structure of 12-bar, a more progressive structure, it breaks up musically a little more and it’s just fantastic.”
Wynonie Harris – Sittin’ On It All The Time
“It’s a great song about a woman who held onto her charms and didn’t share them with anybody, then in the end was too old to share them with anybody because no one wanted them anymore. I love Wynonie Harris, a great jump swing artist, a great blues player. What he realised was, it wasn’t only the music that could connect with audiences, it was humour.”
Paul Butterfield Blues Band – Born In Chicago
“A really painful Chicago song about how hard it is to lose friends. When I sing it, I think of Johnny [Belushi]. I perform it with The Blues Brothers All Stars Show Band, with Zee [James Belushi] the blood brother of Jake Blues, and we sing that song a lot. There’s a verse in there, ‘my second friend went down when he was 33 years of age’ so it’s meaningful for me when I do it. The one thing you can say about Johnny is that he made the front page.”
The Rolling Stones – Little Red Rooster
“It’s just them at their slow, easy, sexy best, with Mick really nailing it as a vocalist and Keith giving it that great spin that only the Stones can do. There was that seminal recording session, when they went to Chess Records to see where all the great records were made, and Muddy Waters walked out to help them in with their equipment.
“When I was 16, I went to see Muddy Waters at Le Hibou [club in Ottawa]. SP Leary didn’t come back to the stage [for the encore] and so Muddy goes ‘Is there a drummer in the house?’ and I said ‘Yeah’ and I hopped up there. I actually got to drum behind Muddy Waters.”
Albert King – Born Under A Bad Sign
“The best of the Stax-Volt era, you could say that he was a blues and blues/R&B crossover artist, but that’s just got to be one of the greatest blues songs ever written, and big old Albert King, left-handed guitar player, pipe smoking, gun carrying Albert King, was well equipped to deliver that music.
Freddie King – Going Down
“A great, haunting, evocative, mysterious, sad, tragic song with great guitar and great lyrics. There’s a lot of tragedy in the blues, but a lot of humour too. you know, like ‘All She Wants To Do Is Rock: ‘My baby don’t like aeroplanes, she don’t like high-class clothes or fancy trains/All she wants to do is stay at home and hucklebuck with daddy all night long.’ ”
Eric Clapton – Reconsider Baby
“I believe Lowell Fulson originally recorded that one, but I loved Clapton’s version of it. That record of his From The Cradle, that’s just beautiful. Anything Clapton’s done, all his early work, he’s a great artist and a true bluesman.”
Solomon Burke – Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
“Again, this is probably more R&B than blues, but it’s certainly in the blues tradition, and what a great blues artist he was. We covered that [in The Blues Brothers], and The Stones covered it but, Solomon Burke’s version is slow with a rolling feel to it and the richness in his voice.”
Originally published in Classic Rock issue 186, June 2013
