Nick Gravenites, who penned 'Born in Chicago' and fostered blues revival, dies at 85

Nick Gravenites' blues credentials run deep.

He was part of a group of young white musicians who, in the 1950s and 1960s, studied the city's best bluesmen, like Muddy Waters, and then began playing the music at North Side clubs.

In doing so, they fostered a blues revival by creating a whole new fanbase of middle-class white kids.

"The blues is not a racial thing, it's a human thing, it's a lot bigger than these little boxes people try to fit it in, it's a lot bigger than the area of their closed minds. If it's in you, it's got to come out," Mr. Gravenites wrote in a retrospective published by Blues Revue magazine.

Mr. Gravenites co-founded The Electric Flag band with guitar virtuoso Mike Bloomfield and wrote "Born in Chicago," the opening song on The Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s eponymous first album.

He later wrote songs for Janis Joplin and played in her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, after Joplin left the group.

Mr. Gravenites died Sept. 18 in California, his longtime home away from home, from natural causes. He was 85.

Before he became entrenched in Chicago's music scene, he was a kid getting into too much trouble on the Southwest Side. His childhood, as the son of Greek immigrants in Brighton Park, was insular and full of old-world traditions, like the sights and smells of his mother boiling a sheep's head to make soup.

That changed when he was 11 and his father died, and Mr. Gravenites went to work at the family's candy store.

"It was while working in the store that I first started to feel an alien trapped in an old world culture, the guy looking out at America from behind the counter. I didn't want to be behind the counter, I wanted on the other side. My family warned me about outsiders, well, the outsiders were Americans," Mr. Gravenites wrote.

Mr. Gravenites began hanging out with a gang from the neighborhood. Mugging people was a thing they did.

His mother sent him to Saint John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin, but he was expelled shortly before graduation for fighting.

He finished at Central YMCA High School in the Loop, where a kind English teacher took note of his writing skills and helped him get into the University of Chicago in 1956.

He pledged the rowdy Phi Kappa Psi and became a member of the university's Folk Society, which gathered for wingdings and hootenannies as the folk scene swept the country.

At one such meetup he met Paul Butterfield, a high school kid from the neighborhood who was learning to play the harmonica as Mr. Gravenites was learning guitar.

They began playing folk tunes locally as a duet. But it wasn't long before the blues captured Mr. Gravenites.

"Man, it was blues heaven in Chicago ... and I was an angel in residence," Mr. Gravenites wrote.

Late nights at South Side blues clubs edged out academics.

In 1959, enamored with Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," Mr. Gravenites, on a whim, drove with a friend to San Francisco and became a beatnik coffeehouse singer.

"I traveled around the country hanging out and playing in Bohemian bars and art galleries, living in lofts and houseboats, sleeping on available couches or floors," he wrote.

While Mr. Gravenites was in California, a friend from the University of Chicago nicknamed "The Goon," who was using armed robbery to help pay for tuition, was killed in a gun accident.

It was the second time a friend died in a shooting. When he was 17, a friend from his neighborhood gang was shot to death while trying to stick up a tavern.

Both deaths became part of the lyrics of his tune "Born in Chicago."

But there's a bit of creative license in the song's lyrics, which open with: "I was born in Chicago in 1941." Mr. Gravenites was born in 1938. The year was altered to rhyme with the next line: "Well, my father told me, 'Son, you had better get a gun.'"

His father died when Mr. Gravenites was 11 and he never told him to get a gun.

In 1964, tired of the beatniks and folk music, he returned to Chicago, where Butterfield had made a name for himself at South and West Side blues clubs before catching fire at a place that was becoming the epicenter of North Side blues: Big John's in Old Town.

Mr. Gravenites got a job at a steel mill, became a frequent guest sitting in with the band to sing a few numbers, and soon was tapped by Mike Bloomfield to be lead singer in a band he was putting together.

"I was broke but happy because I was running with creative, exciting people in a city that was loaded with artistic dynamite. Somehow, I was taken care of, and, many years later, I realize that it was supposed to be that way. People are supposed to take care of artists, give them food if they're hungry, drink when they're thirsty, a roof when it's raining, comfort when they're lonely, pay them homage, buy their magic potions, maybe even kiss their ring," Mr. Gravenites wrote.

In 1967 he joined Bloomfield to form Electric Flag. The band made its debut at the Monterey Pop Festival. In 1969 the two friends collaborated on an album titled "My Labors."

Mr. Gravenites later moved permanently to the San Francisco Bay Area.

His resume goes on and on. He helped compose "East-West" for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He wrote songs for Pure Prairie League, Tracy Nelson, Roy Buchanan and blues legends Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush and James Cotton, and produced the hit “One Toke Over the Line” by folk rock duo Shipley and Brewer. He appeared on more than 40 albums as a singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer.

In 1990, Mr. Gravenites took the stage with Jerry Garcia at a benefit in San Francisco.

In 2003, he and his old blues friends, including keyboardist Barry Goldberg and guitarist Harvey Mandel, formed Chicago Blues Reunion, which played live and released an album.

M.C. Records released his last recording, "Rogue Blues," in April. It was a collaboration with his friend Pete Sears, a former member of Jefferson Starship.

In his final days, friends played recordings of the blues for Mr. Gravenites. Pictures of his old blues pals were nearby. And he became teary-eyed reminiscing about the old days, Sears said.

"He was a very sort of strong, tough fellow and had such a wit and lived life on his own terms," Sears said. He wasn't afraid to tell the way he saw things.

"And he made a big mark in the blues scene and the music scene in general even though he wasn't always the guy out front," Sears said.

Mr. Gravenites is survived by his wife, Marcia Gravenites, his sons Tim and Steve, and two grandkids.

Family and friends are planning a celebration of life gathering this month in California.