Nick Gravenites Dies: Chicago Bluesman Who Cofounded The Electric Flag, Wrote Songs For Janis Joplin And Produced 1971 Hit “One Toke Over The Line” Was 85

Nick Gravenites, a Chicago blues musician who relocated to San Francisco in the 1960s and played an important role in that city’s burgeoning rock scene, died Wednesday, September 18, after many months of failing health. He was 86.

His death was announced by family on his Facebook page. Details about cause or place of death were not disclosed, with the post noting that details will follow as they arrive. “The Gravenites family appreciates all of the fans and loved ones who have been there for us during this time,” the Facebook note states.

A GoFundMe page to defray medical costs for Gravenites was set up last April, in part by longtime friend and colleague Barry Melton of Country Joe and the Fish.

Gravenites was born on October 2, 1938, in Chicago, and by the mid-1950s immersed himself in the city’s blues scene, forming, as his website bio puts it, a “coterie of misfit white kids” with such future rock stars as Elvin Bishop, Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield. The blues acolytes became a fixture in the South Side bars and clubs that hosted such greats as Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and Otis Rush, absorbing the musical lessons that they’d transform into the blues rock and psychedelic guitar rock of the mid- to late-1960s and ’70s.

After years of moving between Chicago and San Francisco, Gravenites eventually embarked for the Bay Area for good in 1965. Settling into the burgeoning Haight-Ashbury music scene, Gravenites, who sang, played the guitar and harmonica, and was a prolific songwriter, teamed with his old Chicago pal Bloomfield to form the Electric Flag in 1967. The group, with Gravenites on vocals, performed at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and while the band would never achieve the national fame of other artists on the scene, it’s impact on San Francisco’s blues-rock bands of the day, notably Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company, was considerable.

His friendship with the members of Big Brother would have a significant impact on the career of the band’s lead singer Joplin. With Gravenites’ support and encouragement, Joplin left the band in 1968 and struck out on her own as a solo artist. Both Gravenites and Bloomfield helped shape Joplin’s first solo album, 1969’s I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, with Gravenites writing the track “Work Me Lord” for the record. The song would become a staple of Joplin’s live shows and become a highlight of the singer’s performance at Woodstock.

Gravenites briefly filled in on vocals for a post-Joplin Big Brother – he sang a duet on the song “Ego Rock” that appeared on the posthumous Joplin in Concert album – and made one final contribution to the troubled star: He wrote the song “Buried Alive In The Blues” for inclusion on what would be Joplin’s final studio album Pearl, but the singer died of a heroin overdose in the early morning hours of October 4, 1970, the day she was set to lay down the vocal track.

“Buried Alive In The Blues” appeared as an instrumental on Pearl, and lent its title (at least partially) to the first major biography of the singer: 1973’s Buried Alive by writer Myra Friedman. Gravenites would often perform the song – complete with his lyrics – in concert as a tribute to Joplin.

Shortly after Joplin’s death, Gravenites produced the song “One Toke Over The Line” for the folk rock duo Brewer & Shipley, a track that went to #10 in 1971 on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite the song’s blatant drug reference, the gentle musicianship and production all but disguised the potentially controversial element – a clueless Lawrence Welk even featured an easy-listening version on his national TV show that year.

Other Gravenites songs were recorded by such artists as Pure Prairie League, Tracy Nelson, Roy Buchanan, Jimmy Witherspoon as well as several of the blues greats he had long worshipped like Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush, and James Cotton.

His best-known song, “Born In Chicago,” was the opening track on the 1965 self-titled debut album by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and would go on to become a blues standard. Among the many artists who have recorded versions are Jesse Colin Young, George Thorogood, Tom Petty and, in 1990, the influential alternative band Pixies. The song was honored by the Blues Hall of Fame in 2003. 

Gravenites would maintain a busy local profile in the Bay Area for decades, often collaborating with Bloomfield, Taj Mahal, Huey Lewis and, most consistently, John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service.

In 2013, he was featured in the documentary Born in Chicago about the Chicago blues scene of the 1960s. The film was shown at the SXSW festival in Austin, and can currently be streamed on Amazon Prime.

Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.