Should Captain Beefheart be considered prog rock?

I'd be shocked if Beefheart hasn't already been nominated in the "Suggest New Bands" forum.

Oh sure, he may be listed on this site as RIO/Avant prog, but he should be listed under REAL PROG.

The distinction is whether Blues is the main defining characteristic of the music or not. Since Blues formed the foundation for Rock Music in general (12-bar, 16-bar, scales, chord progressions, etc.,) then scratch beneath the surface and you'll find traces of the Blues everywhere.


As I have said before, Progressive Rock was a conscious shift away from the Blues leaving other bands to pursue the Blues Rock route. This divergence of Rock and Blues Rock began in the naissant Psychedelic Rock/Underground scenes of the late 60s with Blues Rock being the initially more successful branching on both sides of the Atlantic. Without getting into pointless who-was-first and who-invented-Prog arguments, the fusion of Jazz, Folk, Classical, Avant Garde and Ethnic music into Baroque Pop/Psychedelic Rock (that soon became recognised as Progressive Rock) took hold in the UK and quickly spread throughout Europe while in the USA Blues Rock fused with native blues-based musical genres (Jazz, Country & Western, Bluegrass, etc.,) and became the dominant post-Psych genre. 

However, because even in the 1960s and 70s Music crossed the Atlantic at 2/3rds the speed of light both these forms of music were known of, and even popular to some degree on both sides of the Pond. But even then European Blues Rock bands were more successful in the USA than their compatriot Progressive Rock artists whereas in Europe they co-existed as two separate but equally popular genres. This is reflected in the paucity of 60s and 70s USA artists listed in the PA, which is not the result of any anglo-centric or euro-centric bias (as some would claim) but a stoic observation of how it was back then. Left-field artists such as Zappa and Beefheart are exceptions that prove the rule because they are not Blues Rock in the accepted meaning of the term even if they used Blues in their music. That we regard them as being part of the Progressive Rock movement (or scene) due to the avant garde jazz nature of their music.

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It is curious to note that  the number of actual Progressive Blues and Progressive Blues Rock artists is so small that they aren't generally recognised as specific genres of music anywhere. (notwithstanding Johnny Winter and The Groundhogs, both of whom used the Progressive Blues tag in 1968/9 but it wasn't widely adopted; or artist like Steve Miller who progressed Blues Rock outside the boundaries of the Blues format).

Certainly a 'progressive' musician in the way he approached blues rock and much of his music is more 'progressive' than other bands here .........but I don't think he's prog rock. 

But then I don't think some of the other bands like The Who, Led Zep, Blue Oyster Cult...etc really need to be here either but we have all had this discussion before......haven't we?

btw...I'm a fan of the Captain.