Is there anybody interested in record company news who doesn’t work for a label?

What we’ve had in the last twelve months is financial engineering. The disappearance of Capitol (they call it a merger, what next, a comeback?), and the elevation of supposedly internet-savvy Elliot Grainge to the head of Atlantic, as if music were some sort of Billy Beane enterprise, while jobs are eliminated and…

The only people pleased are on Wall Street. That’s what this is all about.

Remember the eighties and nineties, when new labels were being launched, everything from Interscope to Giant? That’s where the money was. Get those damn videos on MTV, ship those overpriced CDs and then roll in dough. What should we say now, we haven’t had that spirt here since 1999?

Never has an industry been so out of touch with its customer base.

In the heyday of Napster we heard that acts were going to have to make a living on the road, little did we realize the road would eclipse recordings, even for the most successful acts. Never mind that those at the bottom of the food chain have to focus on the road, because streaming revenues are so bad.

Meanwhile, the labels have circled the wagons, cut costs and declared victory. Huh?

The biggest story of the summer is Chappell Roan. Who’s been recording for a decade, whose first label, the aforementioned Atlantic, dropped her. Furthermore, her breakthrough was not predicated on anything the label did, but her opening slot on a Olivia Rodrigo tour.

As for Sabrina Carpenter, she’s been at it for fifteen years. And she was built by Disney, not one of the big three label groups. As for her road business… There’s always been demand for hot acts, will this sustain or is it flavor of the moment? It’s not like we haven’t seen this before, in the heyday of the aforementioned MTV. The faster you made it, the faster you fell.

And opening for other acts is not a new paradigm. Louis Messina’s been doing it for years. Kenny Chesney opened for George Strait, Ed Sheeran opened for Taylor Swift. But country is a different market, and Sheeran is a once a decade talent/superstar.

Then again, all the action is in country. Sure, it’s still controlled by radio, but it seems to be offering something that “pop” music does not. Humanity, singability, connection with an audience…

But we keep hearing about hip-hop acts and divas. And Kendrick Lamar has been at it over a decade and no one wants a new Mariah Carey.

But the major labels are paralyzed by a commitment to an era and a paradigm that have expired.

There is no MTV. As for the Video Music Awards, that used to be a cultural rite, now it’s a sideshow promoted by the nearly dead network and those who believe an appearance will make a difference, which it really does not.

So where does this leave us?

With a ton of wannabes dying to play the old game, become instant stars, and road dogs slugging it out not only day by day and month by month, but year by year. And many of these acts will never break through via recordings. Not that their songs won’t matter. But it’s more akin to the Grateful Dead than even Coldplay, whose first album came out in 2000 with its hit “Yellow,” when despite all the hoopla about Napster on college campuses, most people at home didn’t even have a high speed connection.

So you’ve got to lay many eggs, put out many traps and wait for years to see if anything happens.

Yet the major labels think they can force it, make it quicker. Get lucky.

No one controls social media, NO ONE! Anybody who tells you they can make a track go viral is lying. Futhermore, it can go viral on TikTok and there’s still no demand for the band/act.

It’s not like we’ve never been here before. Albeit without the power of terrestrial radio. Major labels put out a lot of records, not made for zillions of dollars, and continued to nurture the acts hoping they’d break through. Mo and Joe at Warner Bros. were famous for this.

We need a complete retooling.

And in truth, the marketplace has retooled. It’s just that the major labels have not. The majors are signing and releasing ever fewer records massaged for hits. Composed and remixed by committee. That’s movies, television, not music. Music is about the vision of the artist. Sure, commerce is key, but sans artistry you have a business, not an art form. That’s how it was before the Beatles, and that’s how it is now.

The majors hope they can hoover up anybody who has a hit individually. By offering tons of bread. But the acts worth signing don’t fit their game. Never mind their recordings not throwing off a ton of revenue. Now being an act is more holistic. The labels may have initiated the 360 game, but the new acts have embraced it, and they own their recording rights. But even more, they know that recordings are only part of the puzzle.

Music will never die, because of the hunger of people to hear it and the ease with which it is made. But its power in the marketplace waxes and wanes. Music today is like GE, or some other corporate titan, which peaked and everybody keeps trying to achieve that same peak without retooling.

GE was broken up down to nothing. The company was not prepared for the modern era.

The labels have their catalogs. Otherwise, they’d already be out of business. They control the greatest hits of recorded music history.

But those hits were made in a different world, a different marketplace.

Hell, movie studios can’t even open most movies these days. Despite all the marketing. Never could hype be so ignored.

As always, innovation comes from the outside. And there’s no outside inside. No free thinking.

There’s tons to talk about regarding the road.

There’s almost nothing to talk about with the labels.

Yet the labels get all the press.

Something will happen. But it will be a surprise.

The reason there’s been little innovation in the recorded music sphere is because there’s just not that much money in it right now. And the real money is in brand extension. Yes, income inequality killed the music business. The best and the brightest, the educated, those who think outside the box, don’t go into music, there’s just not enough money to be made.

But the power of music is undeniable.

We’re not looking for he or she who can garner the most revenue, but those who can touch our heart, change our life. And just because something is a hit that does not make it so.

So keep talking about the executive turntable, the changes in structure. They’ve got nothing to do with music.

Actually, the biggest record company story of the past week is Universal UK CEO David Joseph leaving the company to get a master’s degree in religion and theology. We’ve never seen a move like this before, NEVER EVER! Leave the circus? Almost unheard of. You get squeezed out, you don’t leave.

But one doesn’t have to know Joseph to decode that he was looking for meaning he was no longer finding in recordings. More soul fulfillment.

And the truth is the public is looking for this too.

But that’s a much harder game than assigning the usual suspects to massage someone with little talent into a star.

A game the majors are unprepared to play, not that they even want to, not that they’re even aware of it!

I was The Electric Flag’s last roadie and the roadie for Mike Bloomfield & Friends so I spent a lot of time with Nicholas both on and off stage. While Nicholas was a great front man I don’t think his behind the scene work is well known. For instance, in the early 60s he was involved with the San Francisco folk scene and with a Texas transplant named Janis Joplin and later helped with the Full Tilt band. There are lots of stories like that. He also produced some very good records. One you might not know is Sam Lay In Bluesland starring the great drummer. One that sadly didn’t work out was the record he was going to do with Magic Sam, who tragically died the month it was to be recorded. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Nicholas was the Musical Director for a lot of the “San Francisco  Sound.” I’ll miss him but he left behind a huge body of work we can still enjoy.

Phil Brown

P.S. Nick did in fact write Groovin Is Easy. He was trying to get out of a songwriter’s contract he had with someone so Ron Polte, manager of the Quicksilver and a friend from Chicago, “wrote” Nick’s songs on the album.

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I was saddened to learn of the passing of Nick Gravenites with whom I had the privilege of working for quite a few years this century.  He’s part of the documentary film “Born In Chicago” that chronicles the rise of young white blues players mentored by their idols.  The centerpiece of the film is the Chicago Blues Reunion, the band’s core being Nick, Barry Goldberg, Harvey Mandel along with, at various times, Corky Siegel, Tracey Nelson, Jimmy Vivino, Charlie Musselwhite and Elvin Bishop, all of whom are musical treasures deserving greater recognition and appreciation.  Of course, Nick’s song, that was Butterfield’s theme song is the source of the film’s title and the truth is that Nick was born in 1938, not ’’41 as cited in the song, but he explained that it scanned better that way — he didn’t fake his age.  He actually was born just outside of Chicago but the fact his that despite his having attended the University of Chicago, he embraced what he called “the hoodlum life stye” and carried a gun on occasion.”

 

The film was written by Joel Selvin, includes commentary by all of the aforementioned (including Nick’s commentary on his being enthralled by “the hoodlum life style”) as well as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, Steve Miller (Barry Goldberg’s former partner), Hubert Sumlin and some others.  Dan Aykroyd narrated it but in his real voice not the Elwood Blues character thank goodness. It was directed by John Anderson (“Horn From The Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story” and Bob Sarles (“BANG: The Bert Berns Story” and “Sweet Blues: A Film About Mike Bloomfield.”

 

It played quite a few film festivals and the band toured in support of it.  It’s streaming now on Amazon and Apple and here’s the trailer:

https://vimeo.com/bsarles/review/579679761/74806b4ab8

Best,

Bob Merlis

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Nick was as authentic a soul as you could ever meet. He spent the lion’s share of his career living in remote Sonoma County, a small town called Occidental, where he played chess in a coffee shop during the day and played music at night in an Italian restaurant three nights a week. He walked to work. His Janis Joplin royalties kept him in business (“Dead people pay my rent,” he liked to say). He was always the old soul in his crowd, the beatnik who mapped out San Francisco for all his old Chicago pals and brought them out — Bloomfield, Elvin, Charlie. He always knew what he was about. Have you seen our movie, “Born in Chicago”? It’s showing on Amazon these days. Nick is all over it and he has pretty much the last word in it when he says that it wasn’t the English guys who saved the blues, it was him and the cats from Chicago.

Joel Selvin

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Thank you so much for this. As we are losing so many of my generation, your likening it to the original blues founders was somehow comforting. The death of Happy Traum was devastating for our community. As you know, he was tutored by Brownie McGee. So I like the idea of a chain of creation, passed on from one generation to the next.

Keep up the good work and the documentation of the music we love.

Johanna Hall

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Along with Harvey Brooks (who lives in Israel these days), Nick produced the first (and best) Quicksilver Messenger Service album.

RIP

Richard Pachter

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Thank you for writing this. I almost sent you an email asking if you’d write something or if you’d even heard, but I figured I’d give it a week. Or, maybe, I thought, Nick was just a Bay Area legend and not on your radar.

As for where he’s been: Occidental, CA. Up until about 10 or 15 years ago, he’d play every Saturday night at Negri’s hotel. It wasn’t the easiest place to get to from Santa Cruz, but it was always worth the trip when I made it happen.

I didn’t know Nick personally but I loved his music. I’m what you like to refer to as an 80’s deadhead. As such, I didn’t experience the 60’s scene. I first learned about Nick when we were coming out from the East Coast for dead shows in the 80’s. He was playing with Cippolina in band called Thunder & Lighning. When I moved to California in 1990, Nick was playing with band called Animal Mind. He’d play every Saturday night or so at a place called the Boathouse in SF. He’d also play The Saloon and some other places in SF often throughout the 90’s. There was a crew of us that would go see him a lot. I have so many great memories from those shows.

One of the many songs, I loved from that era was “Four floors or forty. Ain’t no difference when you’re falling down”

Anyway, thanks for writing about him. RIP Nick.

Rich Waters

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I don’t know how he survived the later years either sans money making music. He did the best version of Roy Buchanan’s ‘You’re Killing My Love” bar none. He lived up here in Occidental, a great town where the respect and honor the community showed him, according to his words, made him feel like a hero.

He lived for the music alone.

John Brodey

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Excellent piece on Gravenites and all the others.  The Electric Flag was a great, great band but they had some problems as I understand it.  But that record was amazing.  Even better than Groovin’ (IMO) was an outstanding rendition of Killing Floor, with Nick singing and some of Bloomfield’s best guitar work ever.  That band had great musicians, played  blues, soul, and rock like no other group has, and, sadly, left just a small body of work.

You’re right, they’re dropping at a faster rate.  And the music will never be the same based on what I see.

Dave Thorn

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Good one on Gravenites. RIP.  I LOVED the Flag. What a band.

I was also a massive Youngbloods fan, from the very first album. I can still play most of the parts and sing all the harmonies. Their second LP was Earth Music, also excellent. No one remembers that one.

 

As far as Banana, he’s Lowell Levenger. Been in northern CA forever.  Regular acoustic gigs for umpteen years. Answers emails and facegram posts. Good guy. He was a sideman a few years back with Steven VanZandt’s soul band experiment. Shared some cool and funny stuff during the tour.

You’re right, though.  They’re dropping like flies. Sigh.

Keep up the good work!

Rik Shafer

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Hey Bob, thx for all your writing, great stuff. I saw Banana playing in Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul a few years ago at the Beacon, they were great. And yes, Banana! The Electric Flag had two or three albums. I saw Harvey Brooks playing bass with The Doors at MSG and he was on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, among many other things. And yeah, Al Kooper, wow. And there’s a whole cadre of lesser-known musicians who are and were important cogs in the giant wheel, people Rob Stoner and so many others. And hey, how about important VENUES/clubs that are gone, they had a giant place in it all! Keep on writing Bob, thx for all you do!

Ira Zadikow

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RIP Nick…as brighter lights than I will surely tell you, Banana—the great Lowell Levinger—is indeed alive and doing great shows, primarily as a multi-instrumentalist for Steve VanZant’s Disciples Of Soul…they even drop “On Sir Francis Drake” live on occasion!

Don Crouch

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Wow! What a treasure trove of info!

Saw the “Flag” in Philly at the Electric Factory. Buddy Miles held court that night and brought the house breaking into a soul shout and repeat mid song . Banana? Hell yeah   Still at it. Tours with Little Steven’s the Disciples of Soul. If you’ve never seen that act live, it’s a must. Butterfield introduced all us white kids to the Blues in the late sixties.  Was working with Dick Waterman in the 70s, and hearing Paul loved Coors Beer, which you couldn’t get on the east coast then, I brought in a case for him from a trip out west when they were playing in Boston. I’ll never forget the smile on his face when I walked into his dressing room with the case on my shoulder.

These were the artists that brought it every night. University of Chicago?  Impressive ! Who knew?

Barry Schneier

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“Where in the hell has Banana been all these years? How has he survived?”

In 2017 when Steve Van Zant resurrected the Disciples of Soul and went out on the road to back the Soulfire album, Lowell “Banana” Levinger was in the band on keyboards and mandolin.

https://www.littlesteven.com/disciples-of-soul

David Fagan

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Banana, aka Lowell Levinger is alive , well and gigging around Marin County with occasional side trips to Italy where he is a legend.

Barry Melton is an occasional bandmate.

And with Little Steven reformed the Disciples of Soul, Banana was one of the keyboard players and had a featured spot playing the instrumental “On Sir Francis Drake” from the Elephant Mountain album.

Cheers

Tom Claycomb

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Banana has not only been continuosly performing music, but has dealt in acoustic instrument collecting and selling, and for the past several years has been a member of Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul.

Check out Banana at https://www.lowelllevinger.com/

Cheers,

Rob Bleetstein

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Nick with Little Steven & The Disciples a few years ago. I love this version:

“Groovin’ Is Easy”: 

Vince Welsh

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Hello Bob.  There is a little hill with some grass beside the marina in the city by the bay with a bandstand on the west side.  Hippie Bob was there grooving in the early 80’s after a bus ride from yoga at IYI near Delores and 24th street.  I thought time had stopped when I heard some tunes start up.  There was Nick G. and Mr. C. doing a public gig with a pick up band for the people at the Marina.   I had a flash.   Last time I saw either was at the Filmore with the Paul B. or Elvin or the Flag or Quicksilver.  Here they were on the same stage playing tunes for the people and me.  Bless them.  Peace 

rwhake

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By coincidence I was reminiscing and watching the Paul Buttfield movie last night ‘Horn from the Heart’.  Now your observations on on Gravenites have come which I enjoyed reading. I am an unknown still standing, recording and occasionally performing. Your thoughts were like my thoughts so they resonated deeply with me. Thanks for recognizing and remembering and honoring these men and women. PS: I always remember Killing Floor first track first album LBJ pontificating on the dignity of man and the horns enter and Bloomfield’s solo comes ripping with applause and drowns out LBJ’s discourse. The triumph of blues over politics.

Cheers

Fred Hostetler

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Hi Bob, and thanks for the thoughtful words on Nick Gravenites.

Nick was back on the road in 2016 as part of the Barry Goldberg-led Chicago Blues Reunion Band, whose tour included a San Diego stop.

As for Youngbloods’ alum Lowell “Banana” Levinger, he is well worth considering for an interview on your show.

Banana still has his Jewfro! He does music performances nearly every weekend. He is a father of 7, a longtime volunteer fire department member in his Marin County town, and in 2016 became the keyboardist in Little Steven’s reactivated Disciples of Soul band. In 2015, Banana released the album “Get Together — Banana Recalls Youngbloods’ Classics.”

And there’s more: He and the Youngbloods were sued in 1970 by Merle Haggard, who did not like “Hippie from Olema,” the Youngbloods’ satirical response-song to Hag’s “Okie from Muskogee.” When the Youngbloods broke up, Banana became a hang gliding instructor, then.– despite his lack of any background in tech — became the manager of the development team at Passport Designs, where he was instrumental in the creation of the Mac/Windows music notation and transcription software program Encore.

“At first, I went out for donuts and rolled joints! I watched the other guys and learned” is how Banana recalls it.

 

George Varga

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You blow me away with your insights at times …and this is one of those times

As a kid I worshipped the Electric Flag and followed the band members for decades thereafter into Rhinoceros etc and other outcomes

Inspiring writing and performances that resonate to this day – other than perhaps BS&T they were on an island

Triumph may not have been contextually relevant to some but music is a circuitous journey without clear logistical explanation

They certainly influenced me

Thank you for the Lefsetz letter

Gil Moore

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I’ve lost two heroes recently, John Mayall and Nick Gravenites.  Both led long lives, so we can’t say they were cheated.

I’m 55 years old, but go back to the early 1980s, and I went to a garage sale in my neighborhood. They were selling an old reel to reel tape recorder, along with a box of tapes. When I was a kid, they would show movies from the 60s and 70s on TV, and all of the really cool guys had reel to reel tape recorders as part of their stereo set ups, so I had to have one.

I bought this thing for a few dollars, took it home, and just randomly grabbed a box with a tape in it.  I managed to figure out how to thread the tape, and hooked it up to my own cheap home stereo, and what do I hear? “Born in Chicago”.

Can you imagine, you’re 13 years old, your hormones are going nuts, you scored a really cool toy at a garage sale, and out of nowhere you hear “Born in Chicago?”

It turns out it was the only box of all of the tapes I had where the person wrote the name of the artist and the songs on it. Of course, I had to then try and find the album.

If you have the album, you will note that there are instructions on it that tell you to play it at the maximum possible volume, not being smart ass about it, but being very earnest, saying that this is how you can truly appreciate the sound of The Butterfield Blues Band.

Nick Gravenites was very much a part of my musical life, and his memory has been, and will remain a blessing.

Jon Green

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Hadn’t heard this Bob. Thanks for sharing. This is the killer Gravenites track fo mer: https://open.spotify.com/track/3bbSR5Fur4mPOEVECCJnMj?si=ZT7VDkOlTP-Epk-Fy4WOoQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A0BBkZzz6Bl8Zku7nSp8D8w “Killing My Love” off the My Labors album. Live, Bloomfield on guitar, amazing horns, killer groove and the vocal is from God himself.

Dave Duggan
Dublin
Ireland

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Thanks Bob
The only person in the world I’ve ever talked about Nick G with is Jenni Muldaur, Maria & Geoff’s daughter. Nick seemed like an all star utility infielder to me.
He and his band mate Mark Naftalin were everywhere in the late 60’s.
I knew of him in high school because Electric Flag. That & the first BS&T’s record w Al Kooper were huge for me.
Those two plus Mayall were responsible for turning me  on to the Blues…I was lucky enough to see Howlin’ Wolf twice before he died…the best was at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival…an early 70’s affair that rarely gets mentioned.
Best, Kevin Teare

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Wow, that brought back a ton of memories…opening several times for the Youngbloods, opening for the Electric Flag (and Mike Bloomfield said my guitar playing sounded like Coltrane – I still haven’t recovered, he was one of my idols), sharing a stage with Big Brother and numerous blues artists who were still alive and well (like James Cotton and Muddy Waters)…playing for a week with Procol Harum right after the ill-fated Democratic convention in Chicago…those were the days. And I’ll never forget hearing what Paul Butterfield could do with a harmonica. I immediately set out finding how to get that sound, with the amazing kind of power that sounded like a full brass section. I still weave blues harp into my music.

What was special about that time was there was so much newness, whether it was the re-invention of the harmonica, the electric guitar, radio, or songwriting that left the pop of the 50s behind. Well, mostly. There were still the Lemon Pipers and the Cowsills, LOL.

I’m a bit older than you are, but those few extra years made it possible to enjoy that scene pretty fully. Imagine what it was like for some kid to hang out with the Mothers of Invention, or Tim Buckley, or have Traffic come to see us at Steve Paul’s Scene in New York, or watch in amazement as some Canadian folkie named Joni Mitchell opened for us…what the hell was she doing with those guitar tunings?!? Or recording with the same engineers who did Tommy, or Hendrix. Their generosity in sharing knowledge provided the foundation for who I became. That’s what we’ve *truly* lost with the disappearance of the big studios – not the gear, but the interaction among devotees to, and disciples of, the music.

You’re right that it’s not the same today. The closest I’ve come was playing EDM in Germany in the early part of this century, there was that feeling of community, of events being powered by youth, and a wild urge to experiment – the results were different from someone like Hendrix, but the impetus was the same.

It will cycle back at some point, probably after we’re both gone but who knows? It takes only one spark to start a conflagration.

Craig Anderton

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Elvin Bishop is 81 years old and does a lot of Blues Cruise shows, the last one with his trio and with

Charlie Musselwhite (their joint album called “100 years of the blues.”

Listen to two of Elvin’s most recent songs “We Are All In the Same Boat” about us elders and his

song “What”s the Hell Is Going On” video with Los Lobos. He has this classic line in that song,

“He was our President, he wants to be our King, What do I like about him, not a Goddamm thing.”

Not bad for an 81 year old and he still plays great blues guitar.

Live Life Happy!

Don Jung

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Thanks so much for writing about Nick Gravenites, he is one of my heroes.

One of coolest things about our era is that for those “in the know” there was something to KNOW ABOUT!

The blues captivated a lot of us and we found our way back to Muddy Waters, Freddie, Albert, and B.B. King amongst others through next generation bluesmen like Michael Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites.

These guys are as authentic as the originals for real blues feel. One of my favorite “in the know” albums is “Live At Bill Graham’s Fillmore West 1969.” And one of my all-time favorite tracks in the world is “Blues On a West Side.” The first 3 and 1/2 minutes is Bloomfield at his peak with a long intro guitar solo. Ahhhh, the sexy tones of a 1959 Les Paul (another “in the know” thing). Then Nick enters the picture. What a voice! Such emotion. The whole piece is 15 plus minutes long but what a great musical journey.

“Blues On a Westside” https://youtu.be/1fS7rjCUEoI?si=vGZFh7dD377jJB3w

The Electric Flag album, “A Long Time Comin'” didn’t do that well because it was a bit all over the place in terms of musical genres so it was hard to pin down. But it’s a great f*cking album! Besides “Groovin’ Is Easy,” I highly recommend “Killing Floor,” “Wine,” “Texas,” and “She Could Have Just.”  Guaranteed to lively up your step and you will hear Nick and Bloomfield at their very best.

Paul Rappaport

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Nick came up when music still mattered.  Music was the cultural glue of our generation.

Nick had the respect of his peers and his audience.

All that together made his career possible.  All that together made those years wonderful.

Jim Charne

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Harvey Brooks posted one sentence the next day, implying Nick Gravenites had passed. If not for that, this would have been the first time I heard the news.

Nick’s best solo album was “My Labors” which has Bloomfield all over it.

The live material comes from the same show(s) as Bloomfield’s “Live At Bill Graham’s Fillmore West”.

Nick Gravenites and Huey Lewis met during Huey’s Monday night sessions in 1978 – where Huey played with local Bay Area musicians resulting in the formation of Huey Lewis & the News.

They collaborated on the album “Kill My Brain,” released in 1997, where Lewis played harmonica.

Additionally, Lewis contributed harmonica to Gravenites’ earlier solo album “Bluestar,” released in 1980.

Bob Levy

Branford CT

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Check out the documentary “Born in Chicago” produced by my pal Richard Foos and Shout Factory (streaming on Amazon) which details the early history of the Chicago mashups of blues legends Muddy Waters, Wolf, Otis Spann, Buddy Guy, Willie Dixon (who I met that same day at Bug Music at the behest of the Bourgoise boys) — with a 1960s new generation of that city’s white suburban musician kids and University of Chicago students including Nick Gravenites, Mike Bloomfield, Barry Goldberg, Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Steve Miller, Elvin Bishop and others. The film was made on a shoestring and is uneven in places. However, it’s well worth watching as a valuable and interesting piece of the history of American music that ignited interest in the blues by baby-boomers which helped spawn the explosion of rock music, FM radio, and so much more post the impacts of the British Invasion and Motown. The film takes its title from the song of the same name written by Nick Gravenites.

Second, the band formed by Gravenites, Goldberg, Bloomfield, Harvey Brooks, and Buddy Miles; The Electric Flag was something very special. They were a direct descendant of that mid-60s Chicago scene. I suspect Clive Davis, who signed the group to Columbia Records during his 1967 signing spree post Monterey Pop, knew not what to make of them.

The guys billed themselves as ‘The Electric Flag, An American Band’ and were the first rock band to my knowledge with a horn section. They designed it to emulate the great sound of Memphis and Stax with a big nod to blues and country. Buddy Miles was a teenager and a last minute substitution for the legendary Bernard Purdie on drums. The band was centered around Mike Bloomfield, America’s first bonafide guitar hero and, the voice of Nick Gravenites.

While I only met Nick through Barry and Gail Goldberg and did not actually know him, I ran into him one morning a few years back at an old school breakfast place near the Russian River in Occidental, CA where he lived. I reintroduced myself and genuflected. I think I embarrassed him, although he was very kind. My bad.

As I know the story, Bloomfield and Gravenites left the Paul Butterfield band, moved to San Francisco, and were offered a gig in LA by Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Roger Corman to create the music for their low budget film, “The Trip.” The Electric Flag as a band was birthed out of that Gravenites-Bloomfield film music experience. You can check with Barry Goldberg (one of life’s sweetest guys) to see if my recollection is accurate. (Btw, Mike Bloomfield…wow! Ask any of the living great guitar players who is on their top 5 list. Brooks introduction of Bloomfield to Dylan had far-reaching implications and was an huge influence on Dylan, but that’s another story).

Anyway, I was a big fan of the Flag’s sound which meshed Chicago blues, Stax, and Brit rock (like The Yardbirds, Spencer Davis, Peter Green, etc). I first saw The Electric Flag in 1967 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco during the ‘Summer of Love’ headlining a bill with Moby Grape and the Steve Miller Blues Band and, then again that December on another bill with The Byrds and B.B. King. Fantastic! I learned the meaning of musicianship at those two shows.

Give a listen to “Another Country” — the Gravenites penned and arranged track off that remarkable 1968 first Electric Flag album you referenced in your piece. It speaks to the band’s prowess, the condition of America in 2024, and the incredible chops of Nick Gravenites and Mike Bloomfield whose extended solo on the track combines extraordinary taste, tone, and breathtaking guitar playing.

Tim Sexton

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Thanks for this piece Bob. I had many a great night at Keystone Berkeley/SF with Nick, John C, and sundry others who would show up and make amazing music. I am hugely grateful for having witnessed all of those you mention here, including the pantheon of blues legends (thanks to the Belly Up wayback machine).  His (and his peers’) work and community helped me form a life ….

I appreciate what you do and wish you well.

mark wasserman

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Back in the day, Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood (where the University of Chicago was located) was an artsy, bohemian enclave of academicians who morphed into the musicians we know and love. Paul Butterfield attended the  University of Chicago Lab School, studying classical flute. (Although his physician father wanted him to become a doctor.) Chaka Khan, then Yvette Stevens, was in high school then, but singing free gigs at every club in the neighborhood.

Hyde Park is on the city’s South Side, a pricey, upscale neighborhood encircled  by the abject poverty of the inner city’s  ghetto. Blues clubs abounded there, and every weekend, it was vey common to see Butterfield, Gravenites, Bishop and a very young high school-aged Mike Bloomfield at those clubs, taking the stage in between the sets of the established blues men.

Before Bloomfield was even old enough for to be admitted to these clubs, he and the rest of the guys were on those stages, jamming with the blues greats, and astonishing the locals with their already prodigious chops.

One of their favorite places to play was a blues club called Big John’s in Chicago’s Old Town. It was one of those joints  that was a magnet for anyone who loved and understood Chicago blues.  Rather than having a nightly roster of acts, musicians would just show up and jam until the sun came up. On any given night, it wasn’t unusual to see Paul Butterfield, Bloomfield, Nick “The Greek” Gravenities, Elvin Bishop,Steve Miller, Corky Siegel, Jim Schwall, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Little Walter, James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sam Lay all on the same stage.

The music was incendiary. It was a golden age of Chicago blues from local talent that hadn’t yet been discovered by the rest of the world. The musicians who provided that music were playing to feed their souls and ours, without an agenda of charting big hits. Imagine that.

Cheers,

Gina Gallo

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I saw Nick Gravenites and the Electric Flag  a number of times and they were a great band live ..He also also wrote the great song Another Country from their 1st album Long Time Coming.. one night at the Cafe Au Go Go they played the Joe Tex song Show Me.. i it was burning and I could just never forget it. I saw them at the Fillmore East in June 1969 with  Quicksilver Messenger Service and Steppenwolf. They played a great set and the audience wanted an encore.. so the band comes on stage and I’m sitting in the fourth row and people are clapping and I yell out for them to play Show Me.. I yelled out a couple of times..Nick Looks right at me…at Says..”You want me to show you..Come to the dressing room after the show ..I’ll show you..” The musicians in the band were cracking up when he said that and me and my friends couldn’t believe that he actually responded in such a crazy way.. That was my Nick Gravenites’s experience… and by the way, if you ever have a chance, you should check out his solo album on Columbia ..My Labors..it’s excellent! BTW.. Elvin Bishop never played with the Electric Flag..

Peace,Jason Miles

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I knew Nick Gravenites’ name, knew he was a respected but lesser-known guy. Like you said, flies are dropping.

Then you mentioned Banana, and I can share a small story or two. I’ve been attending folk conferences, trying to get my songs heard. A few years ago I found myself sitting in a hotel room in an in-the-round showcase, just 3 of us: myself, a woman I’ve forgotten, and Lowell Levinger AKA Banana… turns out he collects vintage instruments and plays the odd gig on the coast but comes East to seek opportunities. I told him I’d seen the Youngbloods at Fillmore East.

I’ve also shared showcase time with Buskin & Batteau… Robin Batteau has a wonderful song “Heart Of The Audience,” inspired by his own Fillmore East appearance as a member of Appaloosa, sandwiched between Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Allman Brothers Band. Turns out not only was I in the audience for that show, but also David Buskin, and their percussionist Marshal Rosenberg, who recently passed. None of them had met yet… but here we all were in a folk gathering. David’s songs had impressed Mary Travers enough that she recorded 5 of them and took him on tour for a few years. I’ve also met Freebo, Bonnie Raitt’s bassist.

It’s been strange for me to meet guys who had been my idols, signed to major labels, now scrambling for the same house concerts and small venues that I’m seeking.

Hank Stone,

Patchogue, NY

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What a great tribute. I guess it wasn’t a coincidence that a Nick Gravenites Band song with John Cippolina came up on my YouTube video thread the other day…but yeah, what an unsung hero…Talk about musical resumes…I bought East West, and the Electric Flag’s first LP…and they were electrifying…but I had to chuckle though, when I saw the name Banana…the wonderful lead guitar player of those Youngbloods’ hits…having devoured liner notes, rock mags, etc…I immediately remembered his real name was Lowell Levinger, without having to Google it…I guess a few memory cells are still working…Somewhere in my fading memory I can still remember the days when someone got a new album, and a few of us would sit in their room and listen to all the new LPs, uusually on a crappy record player (unless someone was lucky enough to have a “component” system with separate amp, speakers, and turntable…). East West was one of those electrifying LPs, from the first burst of Born in Chicago on. My first introduction to Mike Bloomfield too. I’m old so I repeat myself…thanks for that great tribute to a real unsung music hero.

Chip Lovitt

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Hi, Bob, thanks for your piece on Nick Gravenites.

In 2014, we held the premier of the film “Born In Chicago” at our Sonoma International Film Festival and had the “how did we get so lucky?!” fortune of, after the film, having a full set of music that brought to our stage, Nick Gravenites, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, Harvey Mandel and Barry Goldberg for an unforgettable evening of killer Chicago blues, and we danced HARD!

Nick, though at that time in a wheelchair, gave an inspired performance on vocals, playing cuts from Butterfield and Electric Flag and many others.

And I’m glad you mentioned Barry Melton and Banana.

They’re both still very active.  Banana still lives in the beautiful town of Inverness, West Marin where he’s been since the Raccoon days of the Youngbloods and is a multi-instrumentalist and actively plays with many different bands, including a band he’s in with Melton, David Aguilar, Roy Blumenfeld of Blues Project and Peter Albin of Big Brother.

Speaking of Big Brother, remember that Nick Gravenites joined that band after Janis Joplin left the band.  He made a great lost classic with them, called “Be A Brother”.  There was definitely a Chicago-Marin connection.

I think one of Gravenites’ greatest legacies is that he was part of the vanguard of young white “kids” who came to Chicago, starting in 1960 and literally sat at the feet of the Black Masters (Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, James Cotten, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, etc) and learned from them and started getting their own bands together, in Chicago, when there was no such thing as electrified White Blues bands, anywhere.  Before the Rolling Stones and before Eric Clapton and The Yardbirds, there was Butterfield, Bloomfield, Musselwhite, Bishop, Mandel, Gravenites and others.

If you haven’t seen the film, please do.  It’s a thrill. This IS the bridge between the original Black Chicago Blues masters and the beginning of White Blues and Rock that spawned Butterfield, Bloomfield, Harvey Mandel, Steve Miller and, soon thereafter, informed just about all of the 100s of Blues and Rock bands that exploded out of The US, England and around the world.  Nick Gravenites was a big part of that.

Here’s a link to the trailer:

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Ds9X7rzTGzPc&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwj42ZL1hOWIAxUOKkQIHS5xKc4QwqsBegQIDhAF&usg=AOvVaw3-1YKlKgaP9XX7jnOrs6uJ

Peace, Bob!

Darriel Arnot

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So I am about 14 or 15, learning to play guitar.  One day in the Sunday paper magazine (Parade or it’s equivalent) my dad shows me an article about two bands, Electric Flag and something like USA.  Electric Flag got their name from an Elks club, or other fraternal organization, that really had an electric flag that made it look like it was blowing in the breeze.

So I am in the local record store, and I see the album.  The cover was cool, which was an important criteria in those days. Plus it had horns.  I was very into Blood Sweat and Tears as well as Chicago, so this was right up my alley.  Heck, my 32 year old bar band always had 3 piece horn section.

So I bought it, and the first cut starts with an LBJ speech then goes into Killing Floor! I am blown away! At least by the first side, much better than the second side.( I had my band learn their version of Wine.)
And of course, I buy the second album, which had a much cooler cover: Buddy Miles in an American flag shirt.  Which has the coolest version of Bobby Heeb’s Sunny.

Anyway, I had to find out more about Michael Bloomfield and the rest of them, Harvey Brooks and Buddy Miles being the standouts.

And once I was aware, I see Nick Gravenites name all over the place,songwriting, hanging with Janis Joplin, and more.  Over the years, I see his name here and therane and remember my strong feelings for the Electric Flag and all those people I followed for years.

RIP,Nick. You touched a lot of people.

Dale Janus

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“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.”

Getting the answer to this question is one of the reasons why I like your interview approach. You’re not afraid to go there. To pretend that “it’s not just about the money – it’s the work”.

We’re all humans, we all have to eat and support our families. In your interviews, I want to hear how my heroes made out.

Gary Lang

www.theapprenticemovie.com

The first half is fantastic.

This is not the film I thought it would be. I figured it would be a left wing takedown, a la Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a movie trumpeted by the left, released just before the 2004 election, but despite the flick’s condemnation, Bush ended up winning the presidency anyway.

And based on the kerfuffle, studios’ refusal to release it, I thought that “The Apprentice” would be an evisceration of Trump.

But this is not what “The Apprentice” is. If anything, I’d call it the modern day “Scarface,” not the original, but the Al Pacino remake, which has become a cult favorite amongst drug dealers and gang members everywhere.

You see so much in this film is accurate. America is about winning. The laws are just suggestive guardrails for the rich and powerful. And sure, most people will never play in this league, but they want to, which is why poor people consistently vote against increased taxes for the rich, because they plan to become rich themselves, however delusional that might be.

So what we’ve got here is Donald Trump’s arc with Roy Cohn. Who is played by Jeremy Strong, whom you’ll recognize from “Succession,” who until the head-nodding tic gets tired in the second half, delivers an Academy Award winning performance. He’s that good. As for the tic, the head-bobbing, there’s very little footage of Cohn online, I saw one interview, he did move his head, not in the same way, but there must be something there for Strong to have made it such a part of his performance.

Sebastian Stan as Trump is more mellow and more intelligent than the man himself. He’s not a cartoon, he’s not over the top. He thinks, he learns lessons, and then enters the age of hubris, after he has success building in Manhattan.

This film posits that Trump learned everything he knows from Roy Cohn. Is this true? Here Trump is a mellow wannabe, just a rich man’s son, until he meets Cohn, who not only teaches Donald lessons, but greases the skids of his construction success.

Bottom line, the world is fixed. Didn’t Trump tell us this himself when he first ran? Saying he could lead because he knew this?

Well, Trump couldn’t lead. Not effectively. But he seems to know the score. Politicians are no match for business people. Because the business people have all the MONEY! And as Cyndi Lauper sang, money changes everything.

Maria Bakalova aces the role of Ivana Trump. You’ll say to yourself you’ve seen her before, and then when you look her up online you’ll discover she was in the 2020 Borat film. Which opened on Amazon and was the talk of the town for…a couple of weeks.

“The Apprentice” should have opened on Netflix. And it would have gone to number one and everybody would have seen it. How many people are going to go to the theatre to see it when it opens on October 11th?

I don’t know anybody who goes to the theatre anymore. Boomers seem to have lost the habit. And youngsters would rather watch YouTube or TikTok. Is “The Apprentice” enough of an event to bring non-superhero movie fans out to the multiplex? We will see.

And all the publicity will be timed to the theatrical release when…

If you saw “The Apprentice,” at least for the first half, you would not be able to turn it off.

I mean I know so much of this. But when it’s dramatized, when you can see it, it has greater impact.

Friday night I got around to finally watching “The Fabelmans.” This is why the Oscars and insiders are so screwed up. They actually thought this would be commercially successful? Spielberg knows how to shoot a movie, but he doesn’t know how to write a script. Ultimately a film is about the script, and “The Apprentice” has a good one.

It’s a cross between a Mafia movie and a Wall Street movie. Then again, if you knew what went on behind the scenes, you’d believe our business titans are equivalent to the made men of yore.

The tax abatements.

You think it’s us versus them. Maybe in politics, then again aren’t James Carville and Mary Matalin married?

I learned the truth when Napster hit and Shawn Fanning was a pariah, but as soon as the legal precedent was established in court, the recording industry embraced him.

Know that it’s a club, if you pick sides and stay there, don’t talk to your competitors, the joke is on you.

And that lesson is in this movie.

There are a ton of lessons in this movie. Maybe well known to those who are familiar with Roy Cohn, but how many people out there are? Hell, the guy died in 1986.

Sure, Trump makes a joke of Cohn’s playbook, but that does not mean it does not work. Never admit defeat. Sue if things don’t go your way. There are going to be a ton of people sitting at home watching this movie taking notes. This is wisdom.

As for the second half… It’s good, but the effect wears off. The first half you feel like the curtain is being pulled back and you’re seeing truth. Even the deceased Fred Trump Jr. comes alive. As for the senior Fred, Trump’s father, he was a noted a*shole who took it out on his son, but it’s not overdone here, there’s just the right number of put-downs.

And you see the wooing of Ivana. Eventually she became a cartoon, but as a young woman from Eastern Europe you see her trying to make her way.

This is what native Americans don’t understand about Eastern Europe, Russia, third world countries. Life is hard there. Which means you have to learn how to survive. And when these people immigrate to the U.S., if you think they’re just like you and me, you’re wrong. One of the best parts is when the marriage is depicted as transactional, how much cash is Trump going to give her? (After she calls the wedding off after being presented with Cohn’s prenup.)

Trump might be inane and insane in real life, but not in this movie. Yes, after success he’s feeling his oats, thinks he’s never wrong, but he’s not bombastic.

As for the Trumpers who were going to hate the studios that refused to put out this movie…

This is the political landscape we live in. The right wing goes on offense and the left wing cowers, afraid of pissing people off. I’m telling you, most Trumpers will LOVE this film. As for Donald’s flaws…doesn’t everybody have imperfections, doesn’t everybody make mistakes? But Trump is a fighter, and he’s fighting for them. And this film delineates a code to live by. Take no prisoners.

So if you were sitting at home just waiting for the release of “The Apprentice” to put a stake in Trump’s heart, kill his campaign, you’re sorely mistaken. That’s not what this film is. It’s an origin story. It shows how Donald Trump came to be the person he is. Before he was put on network TV by Mark Burnett and became completely delusional.

This is a good movie. For the first half my mind didn’t wander at all, and that’s a rare event with today’s flicks. We have options, why should we watch this stuff?

But from the very beginning you’ll want to watch “The Apprentice.” Turn down the lights when you watch it at home. It’s dark, dirty and gritty just like New York City.

This is not hagiography, nor is it excoriation.

“The Apprentice” is more real than a documentary. Michael Moore’s flicks don’t hold a candle to this. They’re different things. Moore’s are constructed to make you sneer at the offenders.

I won’t say you’ll finish “The Apprentice” and embrace Trump, but you’ll know where he came from, his influences, what made him. You can read this stuff all day long in the press, but when you see it on the screen…

Once again, Sebastian Stan’s performance is not over the top. At the beginning he knows what he doesn’t know. He’s not a bull in a china shop. He’s a man with dreams, who wants to be somebody. Isn’t that the root of every successful entertainer in America, never mind successful businessman?

Deny it all you want, but this is the way it is.

And it’s in this film.

Definitely thumbs up.

Watch it no matter which side of the political fence you’re on.

Because first and foremost it’s a MOVIE, not a polemic, and you’ll ENJOY IT!

Tune in Saturday September 28th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

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