‘Blue Lou’ Marini: Blues, brothers and a family legacy

By Francesca Merlo and Andrea Tornielli – Rimini

“Blue Lou” Marini arrives at the Vatican Radio studio at the Rimini Meeting with his wife, Carmen, and a Ray-Ban case in his hand. The glasses inside are not for him. “They’re for the Pope,” he says, adding that he only wishes he had found the time to engrave them with the words “Papa Cool”.

They are the same style worn by a young Robert Francis Prevost in a photograph taken in Chicago, when the future Pope was still a seminarian. In it, he is dressed as one of the Blues Brothers: black suit, black hat and sunglasses. We do not ask Blue Lou whether he has ever dressed as the Pope – or whether Pope Leo is quite as excited to meet him as Lou is to meet the Pope. But we have the photograph, and we have Lou’s word.

Robert Francis Prevost dressed as a Blues Brother

In an interview with Vatican News as he waits for the Pope to arrive, Marini shares stories from the filming of 1980 movie The Blues Brothers and memories of the remarkable musical journey that followed – including meeting Carmen. “She’s the best part of my life,” he tells us. “After meeting her, everything just got better and better.”

Yet the film does not define Lou Marini. Over the course of his long career, the saxophonist has performed alongside some of the greatest musicians of our time. “They have all been my teachers,” he says.

But his greatest one, however, was someone most of us have encountered only through Lou’s memories and somewhat through him music: his father. He was Lou’s greatest teacher, he explains – the man who gave him his first clarinet when he was ten years old, who taught him how to play and who accompanied him as he grew. With his mother, meanwhile, he tells us he sang his heart out.

So when Lou is asked where he would go, and with whom he would play, if he could return to any moment for just one more song, his answer circles back to his father.

Brother in Blues Brothers

Later, Pope Leo walks along a corridor in Pavilion C2 of the Rimini Meeting on his way to visit an exhibition dedicated to Saint Augustine. Glancing towards the Vatican News booth, he signals to Lou that he will return. And he does.

After visiting the exhibition, the Pope comes back to meet Lou and Carmen. The exchange is straightforward: two rosaries for a pair of Blues Brothers Ray-Bans, just like those Robert Francis Prevost wore all those years ago. The Pope laughs.

The blues – and its Brothers – have brought joy to generations through their music, humour and unmistakable image. Marini recalls that The Blues Brothers is, beneath the car chases and comedy, “actually very sweet.” He had watched it again with Carmen only a few months earlier, after not having seen it for years.

The music that accompanies us through life can reveal the connection between sorrow, from which the blues was born, and the joy it can ultimately bring. It’s a difficult balance to find, and there journey there is not immediate, Lou reminds us. But when we finally reach it, it is wonderful.

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