Who was the first Prog Rock band?

 I guess to answer that one, Danbo, we'd have to first narrow the field down to some choice '69 - '70 agreeably prog albums, then try to find out who got together and began composing their music first. (Hmmm... Lots of work, and we'd still never all agree.)

 Or, I could take a "leap into the breach" (Damn the torpedoes!) and say: KING CRIMSON.

  Ouch! Here comes the flak!

Alexander, I guess that would pretty much be the list to draw from...If Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Floyd qualifies that might be the first.

In the strictest sense, I'd have to agree largely with PROGMAN.  In any case, the first three prog "albums" were Sgt. Pepper, Day of Future Past (The Moody Blues openly admit Pepper's influence) and Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Floyd openly admits a serious respect for, if not direct influence by, Pepper).

Yet even though I myself propose (elsewhere on the site) that there is a difference between an artist accidentally "stumbling" upon "progressive sensiibilites" (or even applying them consciously at times) and an artist whose overall "approach" to songwriting/arrangement/production are "progressive," I'm not sure that Sgt. Pepper - which was clearly a "conscious" effort - makes The Beatles a progressive band.  Certainly the Moodies and Floyd were progressive bands.

But were they the first?  Possibly, if (again) we are talking about applying "progressive sensibilities" in a deliberate, conscious way as an overall "approach" and not just an accident or an "occasional" thing.

If the simple fact of "hitting upon" "progressive sensibilities" is enough to qualify a band as "prog," some of the early ones would be Procol Harum, The Nice, probably Zappa, and maybe even Iron Butterfly (someone made a good case in another thread for "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida being the first truly prog rock song...).

Still, for my money, the first truly prog bands were The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson.

Peace.

I realise this is an idiosyncratic position, but what the hell:

I think prog was made possible by (and started with) Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" because:

• it made it possible to imagine a rock song on the radio that lasted more than 4 minutes,
• it had lyrics which were literate and sharp and not about lurve,
• it emphasised the use of keyboards as a primary musical device (the organ),
• it challenged categories and pre-conceptions about rock music.

Zappa wrote somewhere that when he first heard it he thought he would never need to make an album because it did everything he wanted. Unfortunately the changes he thought it would produce never came...

Prog itself developed without such a blues base, as we know, but it was this song IMO that started it all.

Gonghobbit:

Actually, Pepper was written a few months earlier.  Floyd began recording Piper as The Beatles were nearing the end of their Pepper sessions (Floyd used to "pop in" to watch).

Re "Tomorrow Never Knows," I posited on a different thread (and Peter Rideout sort of concurred, in a way...) that The Beatles almost unquestionably had "proto-prog" sensibilities before anyone else.  In this regard, I would posit that even "Think for Yourself" (from Rubber Soul, early 1966) had inklings of progressive sensibilities.  But I would agree with you that TNK (as well as a couple of others on Revolver) were definitely proto-progressive, with TNK being the most obvious.

Good call.  (P.S. Don't forget that they actually went from Help to Rubber Soul, and then to Revolver.)

Peace.

corbet wrote: Have you guys heard "S.F. Sorrow" by The Pretty Things?  The recording sessions for that album were also concurrent with Pepper and Piper, and it is also a very psychedelic, very good, album.  It sort of got buried in time for no good reason, because it certainly stands up with the other two..

I believe David Gilmour from Pink Floyd is featured on that one.

corbet wrote: Starcastle!!

Not that I hate them or anything, but..... 

And I would suggest that The Who were going in a progressive direction as early as anyone.  I think that John Lennon and Pete Townshend were big influences on each other.