Is there such a thing as progressive blues?

Legendary album........BLACK CAT BONES......`BARBED WIRE SANDWICH`.

 

Hendrix of course. He wrote the book.

 

dUg describes it as ZZ Top tuned down to B. But yeah I see what you're saying.

 

Eric Gales?

 

You may have something there. If anyone had the soul of the blues and placed it in a progressive mode at times, it was Jimi. He kind of defined the term psychedelic blues rock.

 

Avant-jazz Trio BraamdeJoodeVatcher has Q1, one of the most progressive blues numbers, in their setlist...

 

Yeah Jimi. Most "expansions" of the traditional blues idiom are derived from him.

 

Don "Sugarcane" Harris maybe?

I don't know his output well (beyond that with Zappa), and would welcome any examples from Harris' own leader-dates that would bolster my suggestion (if it has any merrit).

 

Is progressive blues when they throw a 4th chord in there?

 

Well yeah, look where he took the blues with Red House, Voodoo Chile, Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Hear My Train A Comin', Midnight, Bleeding Heart, Machine Gun,...
Even thinkgs like Purple Haze and Spanish Castle Magic were progreesive blues.

 

I'm not familiar with his leader dates but he did play in one of John Mayall's experimental blues bands.

 

Maybe it's when there's a 6th.

 

I have a couple of his MPS albums. The material is bluesy jazz oriented. He worked with German guitarist Volker Kriegel who was a blues based fusion player.

 

I agree about my comment on swing. I don't know why I stated about swing because a lot of blues does not. However, is Kow Kow blues? I don't think so. There is a lot of music that has blues traits and I agree there are traits of the blues in this song. More so than a lot of other Rock songs. If I was playing with a group of musicians and someone told me to play a blues, this song would never enter my mind and I would probably get some strange looks for playing it.
Kow Kow IMO is rock music with blues traits...just about every single rock song has some of them. But it is not "Progressive Blues" and neither are a few mentioned by the OP.....they are rock songs.
However, I will agree that Kow Kow gets closer to being a blues than many other rock songs.

 

I disagree. It is well established where Jimi got his ideas from....musicians that came before him. Blues musicians that expanded it before he did. T Bone Walker and Wes Montgomery for instance. He used those ideas and incorporated them into his own style. I guess if you want to call it progressive blues you can. I think Rock/Pop music is the better term to use. Progressive Blues is too broad.

 

Sure, Jimi's source and inspiration was in traditional blues, Chicago blues and some of his interpretations stayed relatively close to the script but hells bells, nobody before him had taken things to such extremes. As I said earlier, I'm not only talking about Voodoo Chile, Voodoo Child 'Slight Return) and Machine Gun, his progressive expansion of the blues was evident in Purple Haze, Spanish Castle Magic, Manic Depression,...

 

I hear ya. It is all subjective but to me, those three songs are not "Progressive Blues". To me, those three songs are Rock/Pop songs. Especially, Spanish Castle Magic.
You got me on that one with SCM. When I think about SCM, to me it is so far removed from the blues that I can't even call it progressive blues. That is a hard rock or just rock song. Sure the chorus goes to V but if that was a determining factor of "progressive blues" then there are literally thousands of rock songs that we should call progressive blues.
Purple Haze does not get close to I-IV-V either. Not progressive blues IMO.

 

well to extend the idea, "prog blues" would not be defined as blues either. this whole concept is about a hyphenated form. i posted some things that looked maybe to expand the blues vocabulary at the time when "rock" was big. I would think that none of these are what someone would play if they were asked for a blues, because they are putative "prog blues", and ought to be distinct.

if there is such a thing as progressive blues, it could come some short time after the advent of the blues. if prog rock began roughly in 69, then it is arguable that there might have been progressive blues in the 1920s. Skip James maybe. I could hear that.

I was posting rock tunes because the rock scene was where a lot of hybrids and experiments happened that we would term progressive, it's the ur-prog moment for a lot of things.

but RRB, what is your affirmative working def of "prog blues"? Does it need to be from a traditionally blues performer? progressive might mean it wasn't 1 4 5 anymore. who knows what it would come out like?

 

Steamhammer's Mark II (1969) might be equally close.

 

I'm all for experimentation, mixing genres, breaking the rules, so on and so forth. But really when you aren't playing blues, it ain't blues anymore. It is something else. Just like when you add drums and electric (excepting bass) instruments it ain't bluegrass anymore. Really what you appear to be talking about is music that was in one way or another influenced by the blues. Its all just music, don't over analysis it.

 

Honestly, I am hoping not, because the existing categories make hard enough.

 

I think John Mayall's Bare Wires possibly fits into this category.

 

I can't really think of a definition for progressive blues like I guess I can with what is considered progressive rock. Rock is already a departure from blues so I think the term progressive is easier to attach to some rock music with the classical influences and such.
I have to say that I sometimes feel I have pegged some rock music as blues when I should not have. When I post song reviews now I use the term "blues variant" if I think the song is close to the blues formula....closer than other rock songs by the artist.
I don't consider any of the songs listed by the OP to be anything other than rock or blues. However, Spoonful by Cream has a blues and a rock section....the improvisation being the rock section.
The first album I thought of when I saw the term "progressive blues" was Kind of Blue. But we know what genre that album is filed under by everyone that owns it but to me, that album falls somewhere in between jazz and blues. I think to most folks ears it does as well.....which is why it is the greatest selling "jazz" album of all time.

 

Well if there is psychedelic blues rock I would think progressive blues rock wouldn't be far behind? Psychedelic rock is a subset of progressive rock.

 

I often think the term "psychedelic rock" is bogus. It may be a rock song with "psychedelic" effects but in the scheme of what the basis of the song is, it is really just rock music. So, I guess that is why I think the term psychedelic blues is bogus as well.
But if someone wants to file a certain album under that moniker, go for it.