Actually, a few days back, but I just found out last night.
I was on my final go-round in the "New York Times" app, and I went into the obituaries, and there he was.
They're dropping like flies. Then again, Gravenites was 85, and was living in assisted living, suffering from dementia and diabetes. I mean 85's a pretty good run, fifteen years longer than my dad, if I make it to 85 I'll be lucky, I'll be thrilled, then again if I do I won't be ready to go.
Actually, I was stunned that Nick was still alive. Not that I expected him to be dead, but when you're an icon...where do you go? Sure, some of them have a website, participate on social media, but the rest of them? I don't know.
And doing endless research last night I couldn't really find a full description of where Gravenites has been. Yes, he worked with John Cippolina, but Cippolina died in 1989, thirty five years ago.
Meanwhile, the obit focuses on the Electric Flag. I never bought that album, but it was on Columbia, and the band featured Mike Bloomfield and Buddy Miles and that one song, I know it by heart, "Groovin' Is Easy." And as a matter of fact, Barry Goldberg was in the band too, along with Harvey Brooks, who composed "Harvey's Tune," the final cut on "Super Session," a moody burner that the youngsters are not familiar with, and this had me reflecting on when Al Kooper would pass. He's not in the best of health.
And the Electric Flag never had a hit.
Nor did Gravenites's previous act, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. An iconic group which peaked in the late sixties which made its reputation live and on the records themselves, airplay was minuscule. Butterfield was big before most burgs even had underground FM radio.
But if you were in the know...
This is not the 27 club. Even though Butterfield himself expired at age 44 as a result of a drug overdose. To employ the Joe Walsh aphorism, Butterfield was too old to die young, it made the news, but there was no hoopla.
But Nick Gravenites... How to explain this to a younger generation? That a musician sans hits had respect, was well-known within the community, made a difference, didn't just make music as background, but as life itself.
I was pondering all this and I thought it must be the blues. I've been waiting for a blues revival. That's what Active Rock is missing, the blues underpinning, which was bedrock for all the great English acts of the late sixties and seventies.
But the old blues musicians... Many of them were still around when Gravenites came up. Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf. I met Willie Dixon, talked to him for a while at a Bug Music party one Friday afternoon, but I was too young for the others. After going to Sun Studios it made me wish that I was aware of how great Howlin' Wolf was while he was still alive.
And it turns out Nick Gravenites did not write "Groovin' Is Easy," but he did compose the now standard "Born in Chicago," which opened Butterfield's debut. And he wrote for Janis Joplin. And Nick was the producer of Brewer & Shipley's "Tarkio," which contained "One Toke Over the Line," but even better, the closer, the almost seven minute long "Fifty States of Freedom." If you'd asked me earlier yesterday who'd produced "Tarkio" I wouldn't have been able to tell you. Nick Gravenites was just part of the firmament, and now he's gone.
So after reading the obit, I went in search of Nick's last fifty years, and that's when I found notice of a benefit concert last year in Sebastopol. Maria Muldaur was the biggest name, but the whole affair was put together by Barry Melton. From Country Joe & the Fish. You know, the one with the big blond hairdo, all those curls expanding.
I know that Melton ultimately went to law school and became a public defender. But going deeper, I found out he'd been gigging with Banana. BANANA? The Youngbloods have been lost to the sands of time. Robert Plant covered "Darkness, Darkness," and "Get Together" is a staple, but at one time the band was so big they got their own vanity label with Warner Bros, Raccoon. And the funny thing is Banana had a similar hairstyle to Melton, what back then was called a "Jewfro." Where in the hell has Banana been all these years? How has he survived?
That's what I wanted to know, how did Nick Gravenites survive? Were his songwriting royalties enough to carry him through, or had he had a straight job.
And now I'm going deeper into Gravenites's history, man I love going down the internet rabbit hole, and it says it all started at the University of Chicago. NICK GRAVENITES WENT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO? That's one of the most difficult schools out there.
And it turns out Elvin Bishop went there too. Was a physics major. You know, the guy who looks like Jethro from "The Beverly Hillbillies." Bishop may have grown up in Oklahoma, but he's no backward bumpkin.
And along with appearing on the "The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper," which contained a version of "Dear Mr. Fantasy" that got more airplay back then than the Traffic original and hasn't been heard since, Bishop formed his own band, it was his name, but the singer was Mickey Thomas, who ultimately ended up in the Starship.
And Bishop's biggest hit, and I wonder what he's surviving on, was "Fooled Around and Fell In Love." Then again, Bishop wrote that one, a classic, maybe that's enough.
But it turns out Bryan Ferry did a cover of "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" on his "Love Letters" EP back in 2022. I KNOW Bryan Ferry, but I had no idea this EP came out. I immediately clicked to hear it.
And now our heroes of yore have retreated into truly being the bluesmen of today. They record quickly, on small budgets, and almost no one hears their material.
I'd say what a long strange trip it's been, but I don't want to mix the Dead into this, even though they too were from San Francisco.
These were educated people. Go to the University of Chicago today and you're not going to throw it all away to become a musician, following the dead art of the blues. Then again, you could live on almost nothing back then, unlike today.
It is very different.
I read in today's "Wall Street Journal" "Mansion" section about a $177 million spec house in Bel Air. Who could afford that? Well, if you're a billionaire you've got to park the money somewhere.
But when Nick Gravenites was plying the boards the heroes of the age were musicians. Not Top Forty hitmakers, but those devoted to the craft. Who luxuriated in the sound, who wanted to make a dent in the universe. Hell, even Steve Jobs got his inspiration from music.
It's not the same today. Don't let anybody tell you it is, they're just lying or weren't around.
And I'll posit the young people missed it. The golden era.
And Nick Gravenites was part of it.
I won't think about him every day.
But I'll never forget him.
Not that he'd care. That's not what he was in it for. He wanted to make that sound. And when we heard it, it was all-encompassing, it was all we could think about, it was what we lived for.
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