The Blues Brothers
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95 free The Blues Brothers trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free The Blues Brothers trivia questions with answers. The Blues Brothers began as two Saturday Night Live cast members in bee costumes, became a chart-topping band before they had a movie, and then made one of the most expensive comedies ever shot, with a 324-page script bound in a phone-book cover and a record for cars destroyed. Forty-five years on it plays every week somewhere. This quiz covers the band and the film: the SNL sketch that started it, Briefcase Full of Blues, the real musicians who backed Jake and Elwood, the orphanage, the Penguin, the Triple Rock church, the Dixie Square Mall chase, Bob's Country Bunker, the Illinois Nazis, the Mystery Woman, the Palace Hotel Ballroom concert, the Cook County Assessor's office, every cameo from Spielberg to Pee-wee Herman, the Bluesmobile's specs and the ill-fated 1998 sequel. Easy questions for anyone who has seen it, hard ones for people who quote it. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation, so nothing rests on half-remembered late-night viewings.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the 1980 film The Blues Brothers?
John Landis
John Landis had directed Belushi in Animal House; handed Aykroyd's 324-page first draft, he cut it down into a script he could shoot.
Q 02Jake and Elwood set out on 'a mission from God' to save what?
The orphanage where they were raised
The orphanage where they were raised, St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud, faces closure over an unpaid property-tax bill; Sister Mary Stigmata, 'the Penguin', breaks the news.
Q 03In The Blues Brothers, how much must Jake and Elwood raise to pay the overdue property tax bill?
$5,000
$5,000 is the bill; a record executive's $10,000 advance at the Palace Hotel Ballroom covers it, with money to spare for the instruments the band took on an IOU.
Q 04Jake is paroled at the start of the film from which Illinois prison, whose name is also his nickname?
Joliet
Joliet Correctional Center played itself in the opening scenes, with Jake three years into a five-year sentence for armed robbery; the real prison closed in 2002 and opened for guided tours in 2018.
Q 05The Bluesmobile is what make and model of car?
1974 Dodge Monaco
The Bluesmobile is a 1974 Dodge Monaco, a decommissioned Mount Prospect police car with a 440-cubic-inch engine; Elwood traded the old Cadillac for a microphone.
Q 06In The Blues Brothers, how does Elwood show off the Bluesmobile right after collecting Jake from prison?
Jumping an open drawbridge
Jumping an open drawbridge settles Jake's complaint about the ex-police car; the Bluesmobile finally falls to pieces outside the Daley Center after months of rigging.
Q 07Which soul legend plays the Reverend Cleophus, whose sermon gives Jake his epiphany?
James Brown
James Brown preaches at the Triple Rock Baptist Church with Chaka Khan as the choir soloist; unused to miming, he re-recorded 'The Old Landmark' live on a soundstage.
Q 08What is the name of Cab Calloway's character in The Blues Brothers, the janitor who taught the brothers the blues?
Curtis
The name honours Curtis Salgado, an Oregon blues singer who inspired Belushi while he was filming Animal House.
Q 09In The Blues Brothers, Cab Calloway stalls the Palace Hotel Ballroom crowd with which of his signature songs?
Minnie the Moocher
Minnie the Moocher was the number; Calloway wanted a disco arrangement, but the director insisted on the original big-band version.
Q 10In The Blues Brothers, Aretha Franklin, as the wife of guitarist Matt Murphy, sings which song to stop him rejoining the band?
Think
Think is belted out in the couple's Maxwell Street soul food restaurant; Franklin needed several takes because she was unused to lip-syncing.
Q 11In The Blues Brothers, which song does Ray Charles perform at his shop, Ray's Music Exchange?
Shake a Tail Feather
Shake a Tail Feather has Ray singing at a Rhodes electric piano while dancers fill the street outside; he then lets the band take its instruments on an IOU.
Q 12Who plays the 'Mystery Woman' trying to kill Jake with rocket launchers, bombs and an M16?
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher's Mystery Woman is Jake's ex-fiancée, jilted at the altar; off screen Fisher was Aykroyd's girlfriend, and he saved her from choking on a Brussels sprout during the shoot.
Q 13The famous car chase through a shopping centre was filmed at which real, shuttered location?
Q 21Which model appears as the 'chic lady' in a Jaguar whom Elwood propositions at a gas station?
Twiggy
Twiggy plays the 'chic lady' in the Jaguar; Elwood promises to meet her at a motel and stands her up, a cutaway late in the film showing her waiting there alone.
Q 22Who plays Jake's parole officer, Burton Mercer, who rides along with the police?
John Candy
John Candy's parole officer comes to the concert to arrest the brothers but decides to watch first, ordering 'three Orange Whips' for himself and the troopers, a drink that was not in the script.
Q 23What home address on Elwood's driver's licence sends the Nazis to a famous ballpark?
1060 West Addison
Dixie Square in Harvey, Illinois
Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, had closed in 1978; the production re-dressed its empty stores for the chase, and the mall stood derelict until its demolition in 2012.
Q 14Where does Elwood run the neo-Nazi demonstrators off a bridge?
Jackson Park
Jackson Park, on Chicago's South Side: the Illinois Nazis are rallying on its lagoon bridge when Elwood drives through them, and Henry Gibson's leader swears revenge.
Q 15The band plays Bob's Country Bunker, a honky-tonk in Kokomo, Indiana, by impersonating which booked act?
The Good Ole Boys
The Good Ole Boys are the booked act; the real band, fronted by Charles Napier's Tucker McElroy, turns up late in a Winnebago and joins the pursuit for the rest of the film.
Q 16At Bob's Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers, Elwood sings lead on which TV Western theme to win over the crowd?
Rawhide
Rawhide is Aykroyd's only lead vocal on the soundtrack; the band also plays 'Stand By Your Man' from behind chicken wire.
Q 17The exterior of the Palace Hotel Ballroom in The Blues Brothers was really what kind of Chicago building?
A country club
A country club: the former South Shore Country Club, sold to the Chicago Park District in 1975 and later the South Shore Cultural Center, played the outside, while the concert itself was shot at the Hollywood Palladium.
Q 18Which famous director cameos as the Cook County clerk who takes the brothers' tax payment?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg, a friend of the director, plays the Cook County clerk who stamps the receipt; the brothers are arrested by a small army the moment he does.
Q 19Muppet performer Frank Oz plays which small role at the start of The Blues Brothers?
The officer returning Jake's belongings
The officer returning Jake's belongings is Frank Oz, who reads out the list, down to 'one unused prophylactic, one soiled'; he came back as the warden in Blues Brothers 2000.
Q 20Which future comedy star plays the snooty waiter at the fancy French restaurant in The Blues Brothers?
Paul Reubens
Paul Reubens, later famous as Pee-wee Herman, has one line as the waiter, offering a Dom Pérignon '71 at $120; he had created Pee-wee two years earlier in an improv exercise with the Groundlings.
1060 West Addison is the address of Wrigley Field: Elwood gave the Cubs' ballpark as a fake home address when he registered his driver's licence.
Q 24The Illinois Nazis' Pinto drives off an unfinished freeway ramp that was really filmed in which city?
Milwaukee
Milwaukee: the ramp was an unfinished stretch of Interstate 794, and for the fall that follows the crew dropped a real Pinto from a helicopter, which needed a special certificate from the FAA.
Q 25Dan Aykroyd turned in his 324-page first script for The Blues Brothers bound in the cover of what?
A phone book
A phone book cover, from the Los Angeles Yellow Pages, wrapped a draft three times the usual length, written in free verse and credited to 'Scriptatron GL-9000'; Aykroyd had never written a script before.
Q 26The Blues Brothers first appeared on Saturday Night Live in January 1976 wearing what unlikely outfits?
Bee costumes
Bee costumes from the 'Killer Bees' sketches: billed as the All-Bee Band, they played Slim Harpo's 'I'm a King Bee', Belushi singing and Aykroyd on harmonica.
Q 27The Blues Brothers made their proper debut as SNL musical guest on April 22, 1978, on an episode hosted by which comedian?
Steve Martin
Steve Martin then had them open for him at the Universal Amphitheatre that September, where their first album was recorded live.
Q 28The band's 1978 live debut album, which went to number one on the Billboard chart, was titled what?
Briefcase Full of Blues
Briefcase Full of Blues, recorded live at the Universal Amphitheatre, reached number one on the Billboard chart and went double platinum, and its success set two studios racing to make a Blues Brothers film.
Q 29On stage, Elwood kept the case holding his harmonicas attached to him how?
Handcuffed to his wrist
Handcuffed to his wrist: Elwood walked on stage with the case cuffed to him, and Jake carried the key that unlocked it so the harmonica could come out.
Q 30Steve Cropper and Donald 'Duck' Dunn joined the Blues Brothers Band from which instrumental group?
Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Booker T. & the M.G.'s, the Stax house band: Cropper plays guitar on Sam & Dave's original 'Soul Man', where Sam Moore's 'play it, Steve' calls out his part.