Aretha Franklin, who died Thursday at 76, earned her title as Queen of Soul for her enduring anthems like "Respect" and "Think." And the music legend also sang those songs in her first and only fictional movie role, starring in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers and its eventual sequel.
Starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, The Blues Brothers was the first movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, on which Belushi and Aykroyd developed the characters.
Aykroyd and Belushi play a pair of ex-con soul singers who are trying to put together a benefit concert to save the Catholic orphanage where they were raised. Over the course of the film, the brothers reconnect with musicians they've met in the past, and these musicians are played by an all-star cast of performers that include Ray Charles, James Brown, and of course, Aretha Franklin.
When the brothers try to recruit their lead guitarist, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, for their backup band, they find him working in a diner with his wife, played by Franklin. Franklin's Mrs. Murphy doesn't want her husband joining his old bandmates, and she expresses her feelings through song.
That song, "Think," was originally released in 1968, and it became Franklin's seventh top 10 hit in the United States. The film's version is a new, longer version of the song.
As The Boombox reports, Franklin wrote about her first film role in her autobiography, Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul.
"The Blues Brothers was something I enjoyed making tremendously. It was my debut in film. The only thing I really didn’t like about it was the hours. I had to get up at seven o’clock in the morning to get ready to be on the set. But once you got there, and once you started rolling, then everything fell into place. I had a lot of fun with Belushi, and Dan Aykroyd—great guys—big sense of humor, and very, very professional and astute. So I had a good time. It makes everything so much easier when you’re having fun and you’re enjoying what you’re doing."The film also gave a much needed boost to Franklin's career, as it earned $115 million at the box office. At the time, soul and R&B were declining in popularity, as the film's director John Landis explained to film website HeyUGuys:
"You have to remember that in 1979 when we made the movie, rhythm and blues was basically over, and the number one music in the world was Abba, the Bee Gees and disco... So when people ask, how did you get the likes of Aretha Franklin and James Brown, it was easy. We just called them and said, ‘Wanna job?'"Franklin almost missed out on the role. Universal Studios executives wanted younger, fresher acts, like Rose Royce, the band that sung the theme song from Car Wash. The creatives behind the project refused to replace the legendary singer, and the rest is history.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY//Getty ImagesAretha Franklin poses with the Blues Brothers John Goodman (L), J.Evan Bonifant (2nd L), Joe Morton (2nd R) and Dan Aykroyd (R), after performing at the 40th Grammy Awards in 1998.
Her appearance in Blues Brothers and her new recording contract with record label Arista saw her return to the Billboard charts with the album Jump to It. As BBC reports, the title track of that album became her first US Top 40 hit in six years.
Eighteen years after the original, Blues Brothers 2000 was released in 1998 with Franklin reprising her role as Mrs. Murphy, this time singing a version of "Respect." All of Franklin's other film appearances were documentaries, and she never played another fictional role in a movie.
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