Nick Gravenites – Rogue Blues
7 tracks – 28 minutes
Born in 1938, Nick Gravenites grew up on the southside of Chicago where he learned the blues from a number of the Chicago greats including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed, and Otis Rush among others. He hung out with a bunch of “misfit white kids” by the names of Elvin Bishop, Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield which led to the creation of that white boy blues group, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He wrote the classic “Born in Chicago” and “East West” for that group.
In 1965, Nick moved to the West Coast where he quickly became ingrained in the California music scene, performing, writing and/or producing many of the albums being released from the popular groups in that era. In 1967, Nick and Bloomfield joined keyboardist Barry Goldberg and drummer Buddy Miles in The Electric Flag, one of the first groups that incorporated horns into the blues sound. Subsequently Nick joined Big Brother and The Holding Company and was a member of that band from 1969 to 1972, where he became friends with Janis Joplin. He wrote the song “Buried Alive in The Blues” for her and was scheduled to record the song with her on the day she died. The song was included as an instrumental on Pearl as a tribute to Janis. His compositions have been recorded by Big Brother, Pure Prairie League, Tracy Nelson, Roy Buchanan, and by blues greats Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush, Jimmy Witherspoon, and James Cotton and a long list of others.
He has appeared on approximately forty albums as singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer. One of the West Coast bands he produced was Quicksilver Messenger Service, where he became friends with John Cipollina. The two formed the Gravenites – Cipollina Band which toured extensively in Europe and led to an album, Monkey Medicine, released in 1982 and on a live album released a few years later that was recorded at a concert held in Dortmund, Germany.
Nick has continued to perform and record music on his own and with many others since that period. Unfortunately, Nick is no longer capable of playing the guitar because of debilitating arthritis in his hands but he still enjoys singing. So, he agreed to record this album, his first in many years with many of his friends from over the years. Pete Sears produced the album and plays bass and piano throughout with Wally Ingram playing drums on most cuts. Five of the songs were recorded in 2022 and the final two were recorded in the summer of 2023. It was hoped that he would record a few more songs for the album, but he determined that the sessions were too tiring.
The album opens with Howlin’ Wolf’s “Poor Boy”, which included the final two verses that were written by Nick for the song. The song states that he wants to “head back to Chicago”. Charlie Musselwhite guests on the harmonica. Jimmy Vivino plays guitar on “Blues Singers” as Nick looks back at all the great blues vocalists as he brings a little tongue-in-the cheek comparison to the vocalists. Lester Chambers provides the harmonica on “Left Hand Soul” with a particularly soulful piano from Pete. Nick says people “try to round up a new car ever year, just to drive around lonely”.
Willard Dixon on clarinet and Keith Baltz on sousaphone gives something of a New Orleans feel to “Blackberry Jam”. He says you can eat them yellow peaches till the juice runs down your face, but blackberry jam is what is in my mind”, which might have another connotation as he asks her “if you remember when I carried you up those stairs”. Musselwhite and Vivino then rejoins Nick on a classic “Blues Back Off of Me”.
Pete Sears adds accordion with Nick singing that he “got everything I needed to keep myself alive in a “Brown Paper Bag”” in something of a polka style written as a remembrance to his early days. Blues Project drummer Roy Blumenfeld who worked with Nick in many of his endeavors in the 1980’s guests on the drums for the final song “What Time Is It”. Barry Sless also adds pedal steel and acoustic guitar on the countrified blues song as he laments his past, says he has “been drinking since the Fourth of July and now it has started to snow”, and acknowledges that he has “lost my sweet dreams”.
Nick’s vocals are somewhat weathered. His voice sounds slightly more grizzled in the latter two cuts that were recorded a year after the earlier five. But the songs are still warmly and professionally sung, and certainly a fitting presentation of the musician’s talent that has been on display for nearly sixty years. Nick was appropriately inducted into The Blues Hall of Fame in 2006 and into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (when it was truly that) in 2015.
