Atlantic City Weekly

As a co-founder of the House of Blues, you'd expect the Atlantic City branch of the national music hall chain to have first dibs on Dan Aykroyd, who co-founded the company 18 years ago.

But money talks, and it was Resorts Atlantic City, two casinos down the Boardwalk from the House of Blues at Showboat, that presented the best offer to bring the comedy actor to its property Saturday (June 13) for a party to promote Crystal Head Vodka, a new spirit he helped develop.

"We were waiting to see who came forward [in Atlantic City], and I really expected to hear from [House of Blues]," Aykroyd says during a phone call from his Los Angeles office. "But Resorts came up with the most generous offer. There was no outreach from House of Blues or [Harrah's Entertainment]."

So Saturday night, while jazz star Chuck Mangione is blowing his horn at the House of Blues, Aykroyd will be rubbing elbows and taking pictures with invited guests and some lucky Resorts casino customers and maybe throwing back some shots of a drink he calls "the purest and cleanest vodka on earth."

Given his background as a comedian, actor, writer and entrepreneur, Aykroyd just might be the consummate pitchman for the product. Weaving stories that are as much rooted in marketing as they are in mysticism, he explains that the crystal-head container that holds the vodka came first.

His friend, American landscape artist John Alexander, had an idea to create a crystal skull that would hold tequila and would conjure up stories of the Mayan legend of 13 crystal skulls.

"He took a napkin and in two minutes he drew the bottle that we're using today," Aykroyd recalls. But tequila wouldn't have been appropriate, Aykroyd adds, because he's already importing Patron tequila to his native Canada.

But Aykroyd knew if he could create the right beverage -- and develop an effective marketing campaign -- that the bottle design would help sell the product.

He approached the Newfoundland Liquor Corporation and asked it to help develop the vodka using pure glacial spring water. He nixed suggestions to add raw sugar, glycol and citrus oil to enhance the taste.

"Glycol, they used that as anti-freeze during World War II," he says. "Citrus oil is something you see in an infomercial that cuts through grease and is one of the most caustic substances on the planet. I told them to use creamed corn if they wanted sweetness, but no raw sugar."

Once they settled on a formula, the government factory suggested distilling the product four times. Aykroyd took the purification process one step farther saying it should be filtered through semi-precious Herkimer diamonds, which is actually a kind of quartz crystal found in upstate New York.

"We did that, and we've got good old fashioned white lightening made with glacial-distilled water," he says.

Aykroyd, who's currently developing a long-awaited second sequel that will reunite the original cast of the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, says he'll probably sneak over to Showboat on Saturday to check out the House of Blues once he finishes partying at Resorts. Ever since the global entertainment giant Live Nation bought the House of Blues chain several years ago and franchised its Atlantic City store to Harrah's Entertainment, Aykroyd no longer serves on the company's board of directors.

"But I remain a consultant to the company and an ally of the House of Blues," Aykroyd said, "and I would like to see [HOB] have a continuing presence in Atlantic City."

Idol Gossip: One of the good guys is gone. Fans and former colleagues are mourning the death of casino lounge legend Sam Butera, the hard-blowing tenor sax player and energetic front man of Sam Butera and the Wildest. Butera, a New Orleans native who became a star when the late Louis Prima first featured him in his band The Witnesses in the 1954, was one of the original anchor acts in the old Rendezvous Lounge when Resorts International opened Atlantic City's first casino 31 years ago. Butera and his band divided their time between casino lounges in Atlantic City and Las Vegas and often drew bigger crowds to the small lounges than headliners did in the main showrooms. Butera, who had been hospitalized with Alzheimer's disease since early January, died June 3 in a Las Vegas hospital.