Nick Gravenites & Blue Gravy at the Record Plant

On April 22, 1973, KSAN broadcast Nick Gravenites and Blue Gravy from the Record Plant in Sausalito. Tom Donahue introduced the set, as he did across the KSAN Record Plant series. It's the only known live recording of the band. Blue Gravy never released a studio record, so this broadcast is what survives.

Gravenites is the acknowledged link between 1950s Chicago blues and 1960s San Francisco psychedelia. He grew up on the South Side with Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, and Mark Naftalin. He wrote 'Born in Chicago,' the opening track of the Butterfield Blues Band debut. He co-wrote 'East-West' with Bloomfield and co-founded the Electric Flag at Monterey Pop in 1967. He also wrote 'Buried Alive in the Blues' for Janis Joplin. Joplin died the night before her studio session, so it ran instrumental on 'Pearl.'

Blue Gravy was a short-lived but popular Bay Area band he formed in 1972. They cut a three-song demo at the Record Plant for Warner Brothers. Ted Templeman was set to produce, one of the label's top names. Tax issues killed the deal and the band dissolved within a year. This April 22 broadcast is the only live recording the band left behind.

Paul Butterfield guesting on harmonica isn't an incidental detail here. He and Gravenites had played together since the 1950s on the Chicago South Side. That partnership ran before the Butterfield Band, before any of it. The setlist includes 'Born in Chicago,' 'Buried Alive in the Blues,' and 'Drive Again.' 'Drive Again' came from the 'Steelyard Blues' soundtrack, which Gravenites produced. Pete Sears played piano, later a fixture in Jefferson Starship.

The full broadcast came out on CD as 'The Record Plant '73' on Shady Grove in 2017. That release is the only document of Blue Gravy as a working band. Gravenites died September 18, 2024, his long career still underappreciated. He'd released his final album, 'Rogue Blues,' earlier that same year. The audio lives on the Internet Archive, free to stream.