Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

Don Van Vliet, known by his stage name Captain Beefheart, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. Leading a rotating ensemble known as the Magic Band, he recorded 13 studio albums between 1967 and 1982. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and avant-garde composition with idiosyncratic rhythms and absurdist wordplay. He possessed a distinctive gravelly voice and a wide vocal range. Known as an enigmatic persona, Beefheart frequently constructed myths about his life and was known to exercise extreme, dictatorial control over the Magic Band. Although he achieved little commercial success, he sustained a cult following and became an influence on many experimental rock and punk-era artists. Van Vliet began performing as Captain Beefheart in 1964, when he joined the original Magic Band lineup. The group's 1969 album Trout Mask Replica would rank 58th in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)