American saxophonist “Blue Lou” Marini reflected on music, family and The Blues Brothers before presenting Pope Leo XIV with a pair of the film’s iconic Ray-Ban sunglasses at the Rimini Meeting in Italy on Saturday. Source: Vatican News.
Vatican Radio interviewed Marini during the Rimini Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, being held his week.
He arrived at the Vatican Radio studio with his wife, Carmen, and a Ray-Ban case in his hand.
The glasses inside were not for him. “They’re for the Pope,” he said, adding that he only wished 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 a seminarian and dressed as one of the Blues Brothers: black suit, black hat and sunglasses.
Marini starred in the 1980 film as a member of the Blues Brothers band.
He shared stories with Vatican Radio from the filming of The Blues Brothers and memories of the remarkable musical journey that followed – including meeting Carmen.
“She’s the best part of my life,” he said. “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 said.
But his greatest one, however, was someone most of us have encountered only through Marini’s memories and somewhat through him music: his father.
He was Marini’s greatest teacher, he explained – the father gifted the son his first clarinet when he was 10 years old, taught him how to play and accompanied him as he grew.
So when Marini 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 circled back to his father.
Later, Pope Leo came to the Vatican Radio booth to meet Marini and his wife. The exchange was straightforward: two rosaries for a pair of Blues Brothers Ray-Bans, just like those Robert Francis Prevost wore all those years ago.
The Pope laughed.
FULL STORY
‘Blue Lou’ Marini: Blues, brothers and a family legacy (By Francesca Merlo and Andrea Tornielli, Vatican News)
