texas music

"Dusty plays with his fingers—he uses all four, and he will also pop with his thumb, then brush/strum with his fingers," Dusty Hill's longtime bass tech, Ken "TJ" Gordon, told us in 2013.

Photo by Ken Settle

ZZ Top's legendary bassist dies at 72 after more than a half century as the steward of Texas Boogie.

When Dusty Hill passed away on July 28, 2021, the world lost an icon of American music. It's hard to encapsulate the enormity of ZZ Top's impact on the canon of American rock music, but there's a moment in the 2019 Banger Films documentary, ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas, where the band's early producer, Robin Brians, perhaps puts it best: "ZZ Top plays the blues, but they don't sing the blues. They turned blues into party music."

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