Awards look good on resumes, but in real-world terms the most important accolades that recording artists receive come from the people who buy the concert tickets and the recordings and the branded merchandise, because when income stops coming in the career is over.

Chicago has been receiving those all-important accolades for almost 47 years. The group’s first album, “Chicago Transit Authority,” was released in 1969 and sold more than 1 million copies within a year. It included two songs that have become classic “oldies”: “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “Beginnings.”

From that very promising beginning, Chicago went on to become one of the most successful and longest-running rock groups in music history. Four of the seven founding members — Robert Lamm (keyboards, vocals), Lee Loughnane (trumpet), James Pankow (trombone) and Walt Parazaider (saxophone) — have kept Chicago going from then until now.

The group returns to Honolulu for a one-nighter Sunday at Blaisdell Arena.

“We’ve really updated (the show) and gotten a lot more visuals going, computer-generated visuals with the music, and it’s really a lot of fun and uplifting,” Lamm said in a phone conversation last week, “jet-lagged but OK,” as he prepared to travel by train from Nagoya to Yokohama for the third of four shows in Japan.

THE BIG story since Chicago was here in 2013 broke in December, when it was announced that the group had been selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. The formal ceremony will take place April 8 in New York.

“We knew that we had been nominated, but we weren’t supposed to talk about it — and we didn’t — until we got the call when they made the announcement,” Lamm said.

The induction itself didn’t surprise him.

“When Miles Davis was inducted, I thought that kind of removed all barriers for everything except maybe polka music,” Lamm said (adding that he was joking about polka music).

The surprise, for fans and music industry observers, as well as the group itself, was that it had taken so long for the power-brokers within the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to put Chicago on the ballot. An artist or group becomes eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first record. Chicago has been eligible for induction since 1994.

By way of comparison, the other inductees for 2016 are Cheap Trick, Deep Purple, N.W.A and Steve Miller. Deep Purple and Steve Miller became eligible in 1993, Cheap Trick in 2002. N.W.A became eligible in 2012.

The honor goes only to the founding members of Chicago — Lamm, Loughnane, Pankow and Parazaider, former members Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine, and the late Terry Kath — and does not include the group’s bassist of the last 30 years, Jason Scheff (bass, vocals), who replaced Cetera in 1985, or Tris Imboden (drums), who replaced Seraphine in 1990. In contrast, when the Rolling Stones were inducted in 1989, the Hall recognized not only the six original Stones — Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Ian Stewart, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman — but also guitarist Mick Taylor, who replaced Jones in 1969, and Ron Wood, who replaced Taylor in 1974. Oh well!

HAWAII embraced Chicago, then the Chicago Transit Authority, in 1969 from the moment local Top 40 radio stations began playing the songs from “Chicago Transit Authority.” The group became Chicago after the government entity that operates the city of Chicago’s mass transit system threatened to file suit regarding ownership of the name.

Islanders loved the early singles — hits including “Make Me Smile,” “Color My World” and “Saturday in the Park” — but album tracks got love as well.

The full-length version of “Dialogue,” a politically charged statement on American society that was one of Lamm’s contributions to the group’s “Chicago V” album in 1972, was so popular that it was often played by local bands in Waikiki nightclubs.

The first half of the song is a conversation between a politically aware activist, sung by Kath, and a blase college student, sung by Cetera, who doesn’t care about much of anything beyond keeping “a steady high.” One exchange between the two goes as follows:

Kath: “Will you try to change things / Use the power that you have / The power of a million new ideas?”

Cetera: “What is this power you speak of? / And this need for things to change? / I always thought that everything was fine / Everything is fine.”

“Unfortunately,” Lamm said, the concerns he expressed in the song more than 40 years ago are still relevant today.

“I was trying to be as specific as possible to what was going on during those days in the early ’70s, and the fact that those lyrics read pretty much off the front pages today is kind of a sad commentary on the world. It sure isn’t getting any better.”

He describes the optimistic ending of the song — during which all the group’s vocalists a sing a series of affirmations in harmony — as capturing “the spirit of those of us who were protesting.”

“We had the belief for a nanosecond that things could change and we were about to change things. Some things did (change) but most things didn’t.”

CHICAGO will be on tour for much of 2016, with a “small-venue, concert hall rather than arena” tour followed by a series of big double-bill shows with Earth Wind & Fire in March and April. (Earth Wind & Fire, by the way, became eligible for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1996 and was inducted in 2000.)

Chicago is also the subject of a documentary film, “Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago,” which wrapped last year and was then re-edited to mention their Hall of Fame induction. Lamm said it will premiere at the Sedona (Ariz.) International Film Festival in February.

“That’s kind of a big deal for the band to have that documentary premiere, and hopefully the producers will get some distribution. Also, there’s a documentary on Terry Kath, our founding guitar player, ‘Terry Kath: A Daughter’s Journey,’ produced by his daughter, which I think is opening at the Toronto Film Festival this year.”

The biggest news for Chicago fans is that the group is considering another album.

“It’s going to be a busy year,” Lamm said.