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Nick Gravenites

The name Nick Gravenites is most likely familiar mainly to aficionados of ’60s Chicago blues and SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA blues-rock and psychedelia of the same era, however, not to some wider audience, because although Gravenites was a significant contributor towards the music during its heyday, he has unfortunately been sparsely recorded and frequently worked behind the scenes over time. More people will probably understand him for the a large number of great tracks he had written: “Delivered in Chicago” (Paul Butterfield), “Buried Alive within the Blues” (Janis Joplin), “East-West,” “Function Me Lord,” “Groovin’ IS SIMPLE,” “Poor Talkin’ Bluesman,” and actually a huge selection of others. Gravenites’ compositions have already been documented by Paul Butterfield, Janis Joplin, the Electric powered Flag, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, YOUR GOVERNMENT & the Keeping Company, James Natural cotton, Otis Hurry, Jimmy Witherspoon, David Crosby, Quicksilver Messenger Assistance, Tracy Nelson, Howlin’ Wolf, Roy Buchanan, Pure Prairie Group, among others. He also produced a significant name for himself being a producer, focusing on albums by Otis Hurry, James Natural cotton, Michael Bloomfield, Janis Joplin, among others. Gravenites’ sessionography can be extensive; he’s added to a lot more than 50 albums being a vocalist, guitarist, bandleader, and/or manufacturer. The boy of first-generation Greek immigrants, Gravenites was raised on Chicago’s South Aspect and moved into the College or university of Chicago in 1956. He begun to play electric guitar in university, was immediately attracted to the university’s huge folk music membership, and quickly thereafter began going out within the blues night clubs. He fulfilled Paul Butterfield, who was simply still in senior high school, with the university’s folk music membership, though Butterfield under no circumstances attended the College or university of Chicago. They started playing acoustic blues and folk tracks jointly at campus-area coffeehouses. Also in the past due ’50s, he became close friends with both monochrome blues players after that hanging out within the Chicago blues night clubs, music artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Mike Bloomfield, and Charlie Musselwhite. In the past due ’50s he started making periodic outings to SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, and spent almost a decade commuting between Chicago and SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA before finally settling in North California within the middle-’60s. Gravenites was an integral participant and impresario on both Chicago blues picture and the growing blues-rock and psychedelic rock and roll scene in SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA. In 1967, he created a short-lived but famous band, the Electric powered Flag, with guitarist Bloomfield, organist Barry Goldberg, bassist Harvey Brooks, and drummer Friend Miles. The Electric powered Flag produced their first overall performance in the Monterey Pop Event in 1967, and their 1st album, QUITE A WHILE Comin’, produced the very best 40; the group continuing to record in to the middle-’70s. Gravenites continuing to perform with the 1970s and ’80s around SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA and North California, filling up his concert events with raw, burning up, very economical acoustic guitar playing and soulful performing. His single and collaborative albums during this time period consist of My Labors (CBS, 1969), the Steelyard Blues soundtrack (Liberty, 1973), Junkyard in Malibu (Range, 1980), and Blue Superstar (Range, 1980). A middle-’90s album along with his group Pet Mind, entitled Don’t Feed the Pets, premiered by Taxon Information, and Gravenites became a member of Bob Margolin among others within a Kennedy Middle tribute concert to bluesman Muddy Waters, taped in nov 1997 for airing on PBS. Through the 2000s Gravenites could possibly be found plus a sponsor of additional blues and blues-rock luminaries — including Harvey Mandel (Canned Warmth, John Mayall), Barry Goldberg (Electric powered Flag), Tracy Nelson (NATURE), Corky Siegel (Siegel-Schwall Music group), and Sam Place (Butterfield Blues Music group) — in Chicago Blues Reunion, an aggregation presented on the Compact disc/DVD arranged Buried Alive within the Blues (documented at an Oct 2004 concert in Berwyn, IL), released in 2005 by Out the Package Records.

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