Captain Beefheart is rightfully thought of as a true original, and something of an iconoclast, but the fact is that he did not spring from whole cloth without any influences. To that end, Gimme Dat Harp Boy: Roots of the Captain is a great idea; a collection that sheds light on the music that informed a young
Don Van Vliet, putting the musical pieces in place for the character of
Captain Beefheart. The trouble is that the selections here don't necessarily tell the story as well as they could.
Beefheart was deeply informed by the blues, no doubt about that, but the vast majority of material contained here is prewar country blues which isn't really what impacted the
Captain's music the way more modern performers, particularly
Howlin' Wolf, did (although the inclusion of
Blind Blake's "Diddie Wa Diddie" was a clever move). In fact, although
Beefheart sounds uncannily like
Howlin' Wolf at times, both vocally and the way the band's instruments fit together, the only spot the
Wolf appears on this collection is being mentioned in a 7-second spoken excerpt from
Beefheart! Certainly R&B and electric blues also played a large part, but those styles are terribly under-represented here. The slack-key cut seems a bit of a stretch at first, but the rich slide guitar tones make more sense once one hears them. It's unclear how the Dixieland material manifests itself in
Beefheart's music, or how the vocal harmonizing of
the Dixon Brothers fits in, either. The Boss Tones' "Mope-Itty Mope", a doo wop tune that sounds like it's sung by
Clarence "Frogman" Henry, is a great track, but doo wop was really more a part of
Frank Zappa's musical universe than
Beefheart's. There are a handful of semi-rare
Beefheart items included as well, probably just enough so that a hardcore fan will need to have this collection, but the other material probably could have been chosen more wisely. ~ Sean Westergaard