In this 1995 Chat with Matt, Matt recalls how he became a member of The Blues Brothers Band.
"...well, we (Matt and James Cotton) played the bluff game around there so we continued playing. It's just that after that incident I wasn't too interested in the group. And as soon as that, you know what happened? What happened with that was I was playing with James one night in Chicago and Michael Zychik wanted me to come up here and play with him. So I gave James my notice and he couldn't believe it, that I said I was leaving. He couldn't believe it. He got up there and he said, "I know what you're saying there. This man is going to do bigger and better things." And as soon as he said that it wasn't a year later I was with the Blues Brothers Band. Laughs. I was playing with The Blues Brothers Band.
I was working with the James Cotton Band and we was at McHales that night . There was a place in New York called McHales. Remember that? It was a great place to play at in New York and that night, everybody was there. Sha Na Na's group was there, even Allen Toussaint came in that night. And Johnny Winter came in that night. Johnny Winter had taken us on tour. That night he walked in. When he walked in everybody... "oh... Johnny Winter is here!" So I told Johnny and got friendly with him and told him, will you take this guitar here and I got another one downstairs and we started jammin and stuff and when we got through and then everybody was going "Oh, really , uh oh oh (laugh) you know, well they heard us playing together and stuff and I found out that I wasn't such a slouch myself, playin, you know. So when I come down off the bandstand...these two guys called me and took me over in the corner and he says "My name is John Belushi and this is Dan Aykroyd. We played on Saturday Night Live, right , you heard of us?" I said yeah I heard you guys. "Would you like to make an album with us?' laughs "Sure." "Well, we'll get in touch," and sure enough they got in touch with me.
See, what happened was I found out later that this guy, Doc Pomus, You ever heard of him? Well he's the one that told Dan and John that I would be a good cat to help them record. But they introduced themselves and asked if I would like to make an album and I did. And I said sure I would be happy to do it. And that was in 78 when we did the album.
And I remember that I came up to rehearse with them and that's when I met Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn. Evidently, the guy from The Band that plays drums, Levon Helm.. You see, they went out with him in the beginning. They went somewhere with Levon Helm or whatever his name was and Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn went out with him. And they went over in Japan somewhere. So this is why they suggested that they should get Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn. So that's how they got into the group, see. So they got me from here, got Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn and these other guys already played in the band there in New York ; Lou Marini, Alan Rubin and Bones Malone. They all worked there at Saturday Night Live. This is how all of this stuff got together see. They all worked there already. They had all played behind the show. You know Saturday Night Live. And Paul Schaffer was there too.
That's how it all got together. Isn't that something? And after the record we did the movie.
And it wasn't long after that , maybe a couple of years or so after that then John, you know, he died. So after that then what happened was they supposedly got together for some surprize birthday party or something for Dan Aykroyd and the band all got together again. But now here's the thing. I wasn't there then. I was playing out with my band. Actually I started playing with the Shaboo All Stars and that didn't work out . We worked about a year or so with Lefty (David Foster) and come to find out that there was a little rumble in there for awhile and I broke off from them and took Shelton and Charles Calamese and got my own group and started playing around.
Finally, about four or five years later I went overseas with my group. Paul Kahn booked me over there in Italy and ë started playing over there and my band was a big success over there so they started asking about, well, what about Steve Cropper, what about Duck Dunn, you think they would want to come over. I says well let's see if they'll come over. So you know we got in touch with all of them and they wanted to start playin and that's how we started playing overseas as The Blues Brothers Band. And it's been going ever since.
We were doing heavy stuff there for about three or four years. This was like 89, 90, 91, 92 we were doing like big business over there. Last year we went to Europe and Japan and we're going to Japan in April (1996). Supposedly they are going to do another movie and that's supposed to start in May sometime, Dan says."
(Blues Brothers 2000 wasreleased February, 1998).
More Chats with Matt "Guitar" Murphy- Stay Tuned
