God only knows how Atlantic managed to lure these living legends into recording, but I'm here to tell you the straight poop: this band's got a street-smart sound that's tighter than a toad's ass. I've heard rumors that John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd were intimately involved in this project, but, believe me, the music on the Blues Brothers' Brief-case Full of Blues is no joke.

Seems like only yesterday that hefty Joliet Jake Blues strolled (for the umpteenth time) out of the Illinois state slammer, the faintest trace of a dream flickering in his pumpkin head. He was thinking about a triumphant rebirth of the Blues Brothers. Casting a giant shadow in the noonday sun, Jake scratched the soul patch beneath his lower lip and wondered, "Is Elwood still working the graveyard shift at the Taser plant, and is he still committed to The Cause?"

The rest, of course, is recent history. By some quirk of fate, the Blues Brothers found themselves on NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live, firing up a version of Floyd Dickson's "Hey Bartender" that was so feverish that half the studio audience had to be hospitalized with the soul shakes.

So when Jake and Elwood Blues convinced the original members of their band to skip out on their nickel-and-dime day jobs and stage a series of reunion concerts at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, theirs was easily the hottest ticket in town. Veteran producer Bob Tischler and musical director Paul Shaffer moved in with a mobile recording unit to preserve the epochal event, and the boys even enlisted "Miami" Mitch Glazer (the brains behind the pithy captions on two decades of Rigid Tool pinup calendars) to write the album's scholarly liner notes. Glazer describes the Blues Brothers as "One scary soul band as mean and righteous as a fist."

Backstage after one particularly furious performance, avid fans like Jackson Browne commented that lead guitarist Steve "The Colonel" Cropper hadn't burned so brightly since the glory days of Stax/Volt, and the proof's in the playing on Briefcase Full of Blues. Cropper's deft interplay with bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and drummer Steve "Getdwa" Jordan anchors a sterling eleven-song set that opens and closes appropriately with a raveup of "I Can't Turn You Loose."

These guys quickly confirm that they've still got all their shit in one pile with a ringing rendition of "Hey Bartender," featuring Elwood's sinuous harmonica and infectious, gut-bucket vocals by Jake. The Brothers strut confidently through Junior Wells' "Messin' with the Kid" and the Downchild Blues Band's "(I Got Everything I Need) Almost" before resurrecting the venerable "Rubber Biscuit," on which Elwood breaks a self-imposed lifelong silence to deliver the poignantly repetitious soliloquy: "Errr rabba hedda waddaya jagga whaddaya." Equally affecting is Joliet Jake's solemn vow, on "Shot Gun Blues," that "I'm gonna take a shot gun 'n' disconnect my brain." Obviously, this LP is not for the skittish.

Indeed, without so much as a by-your-leave, the Blues Brothers rip into a Haile-charged reggae treatment of "Groove Me," a tribute to Selassie that erases practically any doubt about the late emperor's divinity. This feat is followed in quick succession by powerful and incisive versions of "I Don't Know," "Soul Man," Delbert McClinton's "'B' Movie Box Car Blues" and "Flip, Flop & Fly." Pistonlike counterpoints are provided by the heady horn section.

All stops are pulled out and few sacred cows are spared on Briefcase Full of Blues a noble group effort adding up to more than thirty minutes of rollickin. R&B and jump blues. As any musicologist who's studied the career of the Blues Brothers will affirm, their genius lies not in an ability to surpass or even rival the classic material they choose to cover, but rather in the unpretentious sense of fun with which they imbue each song. As the announcer at the beginning of their concert points out. "So much of the music we hear today is preprogrammed electronic disco." This album is an antidote to that condition—the perfect kickoff record for your next rent party. Slip it on the turntable, throw open the windows and, when the place is filled with kindred spirits, then put on Otis Redding Live in Europe. I'm absolutely certain that's how Jake and Elwood would want it. (RS 283)

TIMOTHY WHITE