The First Prog Album

Released by Island Records on October 19, 1969, King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King creates THE template (and benchmark) for all albums and music that would come thereafter and which would eventually be collected under the name "progressive rock music." It is virtually irrefutable that this is the most influential, fully-developed, fully-intentional album of its kind: expressing wildly imaginative musical ideas through uniquely-structured and -engineered sounds and virtuoso-level musicians. But was it the very first album to express/display/exhibit the kind of musical listening experience that the prog lover would come to associate with his or her beloved musical form? I do not think so. 

For me, the progressive rock album is more about a listening experience: one that transports the listener into a world that is far from the reality one is used to experiencing. Yes, In the Court of the Crimson King did this, but there were others before it that began that transition. For David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, it was the musics of John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar--these were the artists that expanded Roger's consciousness to the point of being able to create the landmark song "Eight Miles High." For many progressive artists--like Terry Riley, the Red Krayolas, Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, and Can--it was the influence of avant garde musical theorists like John Cage, LaMonte Young, or Karlheinz Stockhausen. For many guitarists it was the guitar machinations of Jeff Beck on "Shapes of Things" or Jimi Hendrix's sound and playing on Are You Experienced? For many keyboard players it was the work of Jimmy Smith, or Keith Emerson. For most prog drummers it was the playing of Tony Williams, Buddy Rich, or Billy Cobham. And the list goes on. For some it was a song, for others a sound, for still others a vibe, and for many it was the intriguing lure of technological advances (stereo, multi-track recording, electrical manipulation of sound using engineering effects, synthesizers, sequencers, and, later, computers and sampling, as well as digitized programming and recording techniques). For me it was all about the experience: what mind-altering journey was the music listening experience going to take me on; how would my reality be distorted or, better yet, transformed by the listening experience?  

As to the albums and musics that helped usher in the form that we now identify as "progressive rock music," there have been many. The following is a list of albums that I've read as serious and legitimate submissions for this topic. 

- The August 30, 1965 release of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, his first album using electrified instruments.

- The May 16, 1966 release of The Beach Boys' landmark album, Pet Sounds (though I'd vote for their far more advanced September 18, 1967 release, Smiley Smile.)

- The release of the first double album on June 20, 1966: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde.

- I've read suggestions going back to The Mothers of Invention's debut album, a double concept album, no less, called Freak Out. It was released on June 27, 1966--a week after Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde.

- August 5, 1966: The Parlaphone subsidiary of Capitol Records released The Beatles' seventh studio album, Revolver. It reflects great changes in the recording and engineering styles as well as the band's dalliances into psychedelic drugs and expansive experiences from international travel.

 - On August 17, 1966, Verve Records released Holy Music, an album of music composed and performed  by John Morgan Newbern under the working name of Malachi. Influenced by Indian music, it was an album intended to create elevated spiritual consciousness--as was the expressed purpose of a lot of Indian music at the time.

- The October 17, 1966 release of The 13th Floor Elevators' cohesive debut, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators seems quite apropos.

- The Doors' self-titled debut album (Jan 7, 1967). The first album on this list that gives me that transportive listening experience, but only on a song-by-song basis; not the whole album.

- Recorded in early 1967, Larry Coryell and Bob Moses dynamic live jazz-rock fusion band, The Free Spirits, tried to capture their dynamic live sound against the oppressive demands and restrictions of a very conservative record producer (who had specialized in producing jazz albums), one Bob Thiele. The band disavowed the album (entitled Out of Sight and Sound) and broke up soon after its March 1967 release. For a more accurate rendering of the band's tremendous power and impact, one can listen to the 2011 release of a live nightclub performance of the band on Live at The Scene.

- In February of 1967 Reprise Records released The Electric Prunes' debut album, The Electric Prunes. A listening experience that is more transportive in a psychedelic pop way, not as a progressive rock event.

- May 26, 1967 sees the release of The Mothers of Invention's highly-creative and sophisticated album, Absolutely Free. This is definitely a huge step forward on the road to the birth and establishment of "progressive rock" as its own musical idiom--much moreso than their previous Freak Out!

- The Beatles' June 1, 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

- Pink Floyd's August 5, 1967 release, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Definitely ground-breaking, innovative and even revolutionary, but still not a fully-formed whole-album listening experience.

- Procol Harum's debut album, Procol Harum was released in the United States (only) in September of 1967 with its monster Summer of Love hit "Whiter Shade of Pale."There is definitely an feeling of progressive rock emanating from this album. A qualifier.

- In May of 1967, the Strawberry Alarm Clock bursts onto the scene with its mega-hit, "Incense and Peppermints"--which turns out to be a very misleading representation of the kind of music the band would create for the October release of the album that would encapsulate it, also titled Incense & Peppermints. Like Days of Future Passed, this amazing album has the kind of flow-thru that I've come to associate with the progressive rock album listening experience.

- In November of 1967, Deram Records issues The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed, the first album I ever heard that truly transported me to a world foreign to the one I'd been living in.

- Traffic's Dear Mr. Fantasy came out in December of 1967.

- Ultimate Spinach's self-titled debut album was recorded in 1967 but released on January 6 of 1968. This was Bostonian Bruce Douglas' East Coast response to the West Coast/Bay Area Psychedelic music scene.

- Fifty Foot Hose's debut album, Cauldron, was recorded in 1967 but released in early 1968. More of a psychedelic trip than progressive rock.

- March 1, 1968: the release date of The Nice's The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack. Nice with quite a bit of that forward-thinking proggy feel but also steeped in bubble-gum pop, psychedelia, and a whole host of other recent and current sounds and trends (much of which is based in classical music training and traditions). A qualifier--definitely close.

- The lone album of the L.A.-based band, The United States of America, was released in March of 1968, entitled, The United States of America. One of my top five recommendations for "the first Prog Album."

- Frank Zappa's orchestra-interspersed album of musique concrète album Lumpy Gravy, first released on August 7 of 1967 only to be recalled, reworked, and re-released on May 13 of 1968.

- Arthur Brown's June of 1968 release, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

- On July 19, 1968, Reprise Records released Family's Music from a Doll's House.

- In August of 1968, Phillips Records releases Blue Cheer's sophomore album, Outsideinside. A far more sophisticated and organized album than their debut (published earlier in the same year), it is an album that many laud as the "birth" of "stoner rock."

- In August of 1968, Ultimate Spinach releases its second album in the same calendar year. Behold & See is a much smoother, more contrived and polished collaborative affair than the band's debut, but then, a little less bold and singular than the original.

- David Axelrod's Song of Innocence, is mentioned for its landmark fusion of cinematic jazz rock and use of LA's famous "Wrecking Crew" with orchestration. It was released in October of 1968.

- On November 1, 1968 Electra Records released Arthur Lee's third and most evolved Love album, Forever Changes. It is an album that illustrates just how influential the sounds of The Moody Blues had been.

- The Canadian band The Collectors' self-titled debut album on November 4, 1968. The Collectors is definitely a fully-fledged prog album.

- Obscure psychedelic band Touch's lone album, Touch has received many mentions. The experimental psychedelic album was released in November of 1968. Highly touted as it is, I still find it limited in its dimensionality--with a heavy reliance on organ at its center.

- The Nice's Ars Longa Vita Brevis was also released in November of 1968.

- The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow, their fourth studio album, was released on December 1, 1968. Though showing advances in songwriting and studio engineering techniques, it's mired in the imitation of the sounds of The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones.

- The Soft Machine's debut, The Soft Machine, was recorded and released in the United States (after an extensive American tour as Jimi Hendrix's opening act) on December 6, 1968.

I've even made independent cases for Strawberry Alarm Clock's debut, Incense & Peppermints, The Don Ellis Orchestra's live capture of their genre-shattering September 18, 1966 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival--released as 'Live' at Monterey !--as well as Pink Floyd's 1968 sophomore album release, Saucerful of Secrets.

By the time we reach 1969, I think the form had been incubating, congealing, and realizing itself. There are a whole slew of albums that were released in 1969 that seem to qualify as a full "progressive rock album"--many of which appeared long before In the Court of the Crimson King made its earth-shattering entrance. The ones that have received the most mention include:

- In January of 1969, Caravan's self-titled debut.

- In February of 1969, East of Eden's Mercator Projected.

- The first "Krautrock" albums from Germany: the first published version of a recorded "stream-of-consciousness" "sit in" (which would become known in Germany as "Kosmische Musik," in England as "Krautrock") was released by Amon Düül on Metronome Records some time in early or mid-1969 as Psychedelic Underground. Amon Düül 2's Phallus Dei came out on June 1, 1969 while Can's debut, Monster Movie didn't come out until August.

Personally, the albums that give me the strongest realization of the reality-transforming whole-album listening experience that I equate with the progressive rock listening experience include Procol Harum's self-titled debut, The Strawberry Alarm Clock's debut, Incense & Peppermints, The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed, The Nice's The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, The United States of America's debut, David Axelrod's Song of Innocence, Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy, Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets, and The Collectors' lone album, The Collectors. I will probably never give anything released in 1969 any credit due to the fact that such a large number of qualifying albums released earlier than that year.