| Jim Belushi compares his Sacred Hearts band with the Blues Brothers. Both offer high energy fun and good old American music.
Belushi should know since he fronts the Sacred Hearts and plays with Dan Akyroyd (as Brother Zee) in the Blue Brothers.
“Both bands are a whole lotta fun,” says Belushi, who is bringing his Sacred Hearts to The Orleans showroom July 11-13. “We play basic rhythm n’ blues to give the audience an evening of pure fun that started when Danny (Akyroyd) surprised me by asking me to be part of the Blue Brothers.
“That’s when I kicked into a performance mode. He reached out to me after John died (Jim’s brother, John Belushi); he made it okay by saying that John willed it to you. It gave me a musical freedom and allowed me to become a better entertainer.”
Belushi said that he knew Akyroyd prior to his brother’s death, “but we weren’t friends.” He said Danny kept John’s spirit alive and that he found a new brother
“Danny kept things together and we were able to help Judy (John’s wife) through a very difficult time,” said Belushi. “Judy is an angel.”
With more than 50 motion pictures and a couple of Broadway roles under his belt, Belushi is in the middle of taping his eight season of his ABC-TV comedy series, “According to Jim.”
“We’ve finished 164 episodes and gunning for 200,” said Belushi via telephone from his Los Angeles home. “It’s a great experience and allows me so much time to enjoy my family. I get to live a pretty normal life…coaching soccer, yelling at my son.” He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and two children, Jamison and Jared.
Belushi says that he enjoys looking at past episodes of “According to Jim.”
“The weight change is mind-boggling; 15 marriages; the kids growing up. It’s all surreal,” he says. “It’s a fantastic second family.”
Jim Belushi was born June 15, 1954 in Chicago, the third of four children of Adam Belushi, an Albanian immigrant who left his native Qytezë village in 1934 at the age of 15, and Agnes, who was born in the U.S. of Albanian immigrants.
A high school teacher, impressed by Belushi’s improvisational skills while giving speeches, convinced him to be in a school play. After that he joined the school’s drama club.
Ask him why he got involved in acting, he’ll jokingly say “because of girls. In the drama club, there were about 20 girls and 6 guys. And, the same thing with choir...more girls!” He also played football, but since he was a tackle, didn’t get many dates from it.
He attended the College of Dupage and graduated from Southern Illinois University with a degree in speech and theater arts. From 1976-80 he became a resident member of Chicago’s famed Second City troupe.
In 1979, write-producer Garry Marshall saw him performing for Second City and arranged for him to come to Hollywood and co-star in a television pilot, “Who’s
Watching the Kids,” and then for a role in the show “Working Stiffs” (co-starring Michael Keaton).
In 1983, he joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” for two years. Belushi garnered national attention through his role in Edward Zwick’s film “About Last Night” with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, playing the role he originated in the Chicago Apollo Theatre’s production of David Mamet’s Obie-award winning play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.”
His feature credits show an extraordinary range. He was James Woods’ spacey DJ buddy, Dr. Rock, in Oliver Stone’s “Salvador”; the mentally handicapped dishwasher befriended by Whoopi Goldberg in, “Homer and Eddie” and the defiant high school principal standing up to drug dealers in “The Principal.”
In 2000 Belushi co-starred in “Return to Me,” starring David Duchovny and Minnie Driver, and he received rave reviews for his work with Gregory Hines in Showtime’s “Who Killed Atlanta’s Children?”
As his popularity grew over the years, so did his roles in film, theater, and television.
Belushi has performed on Broadway in Herb Gardner’s acclaimed “Conversations with My Father,” off-Broadway in “True West,” in the Williamstown Theatre Festival production of John Guare’s “Moon Over Miami,” and for Joseph Papp as the Pirate King in “Pirates of Penzance.”
He not only keeps busy acting in films and is an investor in the House of Blues.
Jim has little time outside career and family, but has made a major commitment as founder and member of the board of the John Belushi Scholarship Fund, which supports college and college-prep students pursuing performance and visual arts education.
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