'The Blues Brothers' Made Their Debut as “Saturday Night Live”'s Musical Guests 48 Years Ago, but Were Far from a Punchline
'The Blues Brothers' Made Their Debut as “Saturday Night Live”'s Musical Guests 48 Years Ago, but Were Far from a Punchline
Angela AndaloroThu, April 23, 2026 at 5:40 PM UTC
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Dan Aykroyd (left) as Elwood Blues, John Belushi as Jake Blues of "Saturday Night Live" musical guest the Blues BrothersCredit: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty -
The Blues Brothers began as a Saturday Night Live bit between stars Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi
Both actors also had musical backgrounds, which led to the project taking on a greater life
The pair's debut on the April 22, 1978 episode changed the game for them as both musicians and actors
The Blues Brothers came to be somewhere between fiction and reality.
What began as an idea in season 1 of Saturday Night Live blossomed into something bigger for stars Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. The two first performed together in bee costumes for a January 1976 episode as "Howard Shore and his All-Bee Band." The duo's look hadn't developed, but the blues-based sounds were there.
Belushi found inspiration for the band's look while traveling between seasons of the sketch comedy show during filming for the 1978 hit Animal House. When he got back to New York, he continued to work on developing the act with Aykroyd.
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In 2024's Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude, Aykroyd talked about working with colleagues and collaborators Jim Belushi, Paul Shaffer, Curtis Salgado, John Landis, Steve Jordan and Judy Belushi Pisano to bring the group to life, noting SNL producer Lorne Michaels "didn't dig it" at first.
That all changed on the April 22, 1978 episode, where Aykroyd and Belushi got the opportunity to shine.
SNL and Blues Brothers saxophonist Lou Marini said the initial Blues Brothers sketch came to be after, "One of the shows late in the season, they were short, and he said, 'You guys want to do your silly song? Go ahead and do it.' And so we did it on the show and it was a tremendous hit — people just went crazy for it."
“It wasn't a bit exactly that they were doing,” John's wife, Judy Belushi Pisano explained. “It's often referred to [that] The Blues Brothers [were] developed from a skit on Saturday Night Live. And, you know, that's really just not true.”
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At NBC’s Studio 8H's live taping of SNL50: The Anniversary Special in 2025, Jim Belushi shared fond memories of that very night the two took the stage.
“When John and Danny entered that first time, nobody knew what was going to happen,” the actor and comedian told PEOPLE. “That cartwheel, boy, does my brother know how to make an entrance.”
Dan Aykroyd (left) and John Belushi as The Blues BrothersCredit: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty
From there, Aykroyd and Belushi toured as a musical act, the Blues Brothers, along with a talented group of musicians and an ever-growing following. They even released an album, 1978's Briefcase Full of Blues, that went double platinum.
The personas also became the first recurring Saturday Night Live characters to get their own film, which featured cameos and musical performances by R&B greats like Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Ray Charles.
Still, there was criticism from the music community about what they were doing and how it could be perceived as the mockery of a genre, something Belushi refuted in a 1979 interview with Steve Bloom of Soho Weekly News.
"The people who are watching me understand why I do it and the band members do. As for the other people — I think there’s a certain amount of jealousy, you know, because I’ve been on television, I’ve had a Number One record and a big movie hit . And then for this guy to keep coming to the public and to perform just for the sake of performing, they can’t understand it. You know, I’d rather be performing than doing a lot of television because that’s what I basically am," he said at the time.
Following John Belushi’s tragic death in 1982, Jim began performing in John's place as Zee Blues alongside Aykroyd, who is now 73, and even voiced the role of Jake Blues in an animated series based on the characters, which never aired. While Jim did not appear in the 1980 film’s sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), he did perform alongside Aykroyd and John Goodman in character during the 1997 Super Bowl halftime show.
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