That said compared to various progressive acts in the archives like Klaus Schulze, Codona, Aranis, Art Zoyd, Oregon, Dead Can Dance to name a few... The Captain undoubtedly rocks, and more often than not with a progressive approach.

I kinda think of people like this, as "progressive" as an artist, even though as a musician they aren't. I mean, the same thing can be said about Bob Dylan, whose words we can just about quote from a song or two, and yet the music, for us? ... heck we remember Jimi's version better than any of Bob's songs, see?

 

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/<span style="line-height: 18.2px;">Psychedelic </span>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.