Blues or Jazz (influences on prog)?

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 Dick Heath wrote:

In reality, and being there I'm fully aware that prog grew away from several strong musical roots simultaneous (blues, jazz and serious plus west coast/Anglo-psyschedelia) and was fertilised with many others musical forms. I've written the following a number of times before but here goes again, the first albums in the Prog Music section in our record shop 67/68 were Canned Heat, John Mayall, Moody Blues, The Nice, sooner than later, joined by Quick Silver Messenger Service and so on - much of this was blues boom influenced, which was fused with psychedelia. And where did we put Hendrix, Cream and all the blues rock bands that jumped on that band wagon, initially in the Blues section but increasingly with time  in Prog Music section? ...

Agreed.

What made things harder to describe is that America has what comes off as three or four distinct "progressive" styles, some of which are more blues oriented or not. 

The American scenes in my book are New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. 

And one can sit and say that Chicago and SF might have been considered mmore blues oriented than jazz, but then you fun into the likes of Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Miller and that bunch of folks ... and they tend to blurr the line, but are not jazz per se. The LA scene was almost totally and exclusively independent and I think that it was more "ordained" by the visualness (and film oriented material) that the Doors left behind ... which in a way is not surprising when it comes to tinseltown ... in a sick/funny sort of way that makes sense.

Chicago is almost all blues oriented and extended, and even the band Chicagp is a good representative of that in their early days. But the blues you can find in Chicago are not always the same blues you find elsewhere ... they tend to be independent and on its own and not always conventional.

NY, is a different beat ... why? Media, arts, literature, Andy Warhol, Burroughs and many others ... and it's impossible to say what really influenced "Velvet Underground" for example, which when you listen to it has roots in blues more than jazz, and it is rock for the most part, but that hardly defines Nico! And John Cale later! The arts tend to define things in here and later the likes of Ramones and the like scene was really just a reaction to having to think too much about the music and art ... and I call it the American Sex Pistols. 

Hendrix did not fit any of these American scenes, and his being forced to play "blues" was really counter to what he obviously wanted to do in Europe, where unffortunately the money and sales was not ... yet ... for him! And I think that the record labels forced him to do stuff he didn't want to do.

Progressive in America tended to come from blues/jazz mixes and work. 

Progressive in Europe had more influence from classical music which has been part of their history for at least 500 years. Thus a long cut is not surprising. 

What is surprising was seeing Iron Butterfly getting everyone going with a 20 plus minutes piece of music that everyone tripped on ... and it was not exactly jazz, nor was it blues ... and I really think that got people thinking about what could be done.

One other ... the guitar playing by James Gurley in "Cheap Thrills" I think is above and beyond and probably the type of thing that SF gave the world ... bombastic guitar solos ... that were not exactly blues ting'd ... but became the staple in the majority of the late 60's music and certainly one of the highlights in a lot of the progressive works that we love.

Edited by moshkito - October 07 2010 at 21:18

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