Locals ‘Shake A Tail Feather’ at Ray’s Music Exchange — a long-time 47th St. pawn shop

Shelly’s Loan and Jewelry had been in business for more than half-century at the time of the filming of “The Blues Brothers.”

By Dave Newbart

A mural painted on the side of Shelly’s, 300 E. 47th Street, as seen in 2005. The mural was done for the filming of “The Blues Brothers,” which transformed the shop into Ray’s Music Exchange.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on June 22, 2005, as part of a weeklong series to commemorate the 25th anniversary of “The Blues Brothers.” The Sun-Times is republishing the stores to mark the 40th anniversary of the movie in 2020.

You can still pawn just about anything in the store where Ray Charles was pictured singing a spirited “Shake A Tail Feather” as hundreds danced to the beat outside.

The Bronzeville store — re-created on a Hollywood set for “The Blues Brothers” — was renamed Ray’s Music Exchange for the movie and set in Calumet City.

But for more than half a century, the store actually has been known as Shelly’s Loan and Jewelry at 300 E. 47th.

Its original owner has died, but you can still buy guitars, horns and even keyboards like the one Charles tickled for the movie and then sold to the Blues Brothers band. You also can get electronics like DVD players and big-screen TVs. The store still advertises “Cash in a Flash,” as it did in the movie.

But the aging store could soon be out of place in Bronzeville, which is beginning to show signs of a revival. Many of its shelves, formerly stocked with pawned goods for sale, are now bare. Across the street from Shelly’s, a sign on a remodeled greystone boasts, “Luxury has a new address.”

A mural of Stevie Wonder once covered the facade of Shelly’s Loan and Jewelry on 47th Street, which was used for a scene in “The Blues Brothers.”

An art gallery, spoken word cafe and posh eatery sit across the street from the year-old, $19.5 million Harold Washington Cultural Center on Martin Luther King Drive. Those all lie just on the other side of the 47th Street Green Line L station from Shelly’s — the same train station that filled with dancers, despite the chilly weather on the day it was filmed in 1979.

Movie director John Landis said those dancers weren’t hired — they just got off the train and started to boogie.

Dancers take to the street for a huge dance number on 47th Street during the filming of “The Blues Brothers.”

Changes in the neighborhood

But while residents said they welcome safer streets — made possible in part by a police camera recently placed on 47th — they also lament the lack of affordable housing. Median home values jumped 170 percent in the 1990s, according to the Chicago Rehab Network.

“The people that were around during the movie won’t be there long,” said the Rev. David Fields, whose Tremont Missionary Baptist Church can be seen in the movie.

One of those longtime residents, 53-year-old Michael Brown, who was pawning a bracelet at Shelly’s recently, said very few families without dual incomes can afford to stick around. But he sees the change as for the better — he remembers countless drive-by shootings in the 1980s and 1990s.

He hopes the area — now dubbed a Blues District — can regain its status as home to some of the liveliest blues clubs in the city, such as the Checkerboard and Theresa’s Lounge.

Brown remembers the filming of the movie — he tried to get hired as a dancer but was rebuffed — and also remembers artists painting the mural of rhythm and blues greats that occupies a wall outside Shelly’s.

The store’s current owner, Patricia Lowis, said she has had to restore the mural because it has been a target of graffiti artists. Although it’s now faded, the larger-than-life pictures of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Charles still occasionally attract tourists.

Sheldon Zuchman, store manager at the time, remembers the mural took a month to paint. The scene cost $600,000 to produce. In the movie, the mural was backdrop to a spectacular dance number that featured hundreds of extras “shaking their tailfeathers” as Charles sang.