When Dusty Hill handed away on July 28, 2021, the world misplaced an icon of American music. It is onerous to encapsulate the enormity of ZZ High’s impression on the canon of American rock music, however there is a second within the 2019 Banger Movies documentary, ZZ High: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas, the place the band’s early producer, Robin Brians, maybe places it finest: “ZZ High performs the blues, however they do not sing the blues. They turned blues into get together music.”
The magnitude of that singular act could be traced on to bands like Van Halen, the Anglo-American variations of Whitesnake, and numerous others—that is how deeply embedded in well-liked music ZZ High’s affect has change into. Not solely are they fairly probably Texas’s most profitable musical export—with greater than 50 million data offered worldwide and greater than 50 years as a band—they’re one among America’s, too.
ZZ High – Sleeping Bag (Official Music Video)
Hill’s position in ZZ High has all the time been understated and underrated. Upon listening to the information of his premature passing yesterday, a colleague requested if I would ever met him, to which I replied, “Solely by his bass strains.” Although I by no means acquired to interview him personally, there’s an intimacy in studying another person’s music and bass elements. Dusty’s Texas groove was undeniably scrumptious, and an train in restraint. It is tempting to wish to overplay, however his bass strains symbolize a masterclass within the age-previous musical mantra, “much less is extra.” His performances are seemingly simplistic, however copping his indelible really feel is one other matter solely. His deep-pocketed, onerous-hitting grooves on now-traditional tunes like, “La Grange,” “Tush,” “Low-cost Sun shades,” and “Tube Snake Boogie,” had been primarily based on a easy, but efficient technique.
“Generally you do not even discover the bass,” he mentioned in a 2016 article by Gary Graff in For Bass Gamers Solely. “That is a praise. Meaning you have crammed in all the things and it is proper for the track, and you are not standing out the place you do not have to be.” Finally, his spin on the blues, and perspective about bass, created the right foil for Billy Gibbons’ masterful guitar enjoying and Frank Beard’s rock-infused Texas Shuffle.
Born Joseph Michael Hill on Might 19, 1949, in Dallas, Texas, Dusty grew up a self-professed Elvis Presley fanatic. He retells the story of his musical origins within the Banger documentary, recalling that he acquired into music by singing alongside to an Elvis report his mom introduced house from the diner the place she labored. When he was eight years previous, he determined to sing a track in public, at a restaurant presumably, which resulted within the patrons at a close-by desk giving him change. That was it—he acquired cash in trade for singing and primarily by no means seemed again. He performed cello for a bit in highschool however switched to bass on the behest of his older, guitar-enjoying brother, Rocky Hill, who determined that their band, during which Dusty was solely a vocalist on the time, wanted a bassist. And so, from 1966 to 1968, together with future ZZ High drummer Frank Beard, the Hill brothers performed regionally in Dallas with the Warlocks, the Cellar Dwellers, and American Blues.
ZZ High’s bassist Dusty Hill and guitarist Billy F. Gibbons performed collectively for 52 years. Atop Hill’s shoulder is his foremost bass on the time this picture was taken in 2013: a John Bolin-constructed chambered slab physique with a Seymour Duncan stacked P-bass pickup for Texas Blues tone with a splash of nastiness.
Photograph by Ken Settle
In 1968, uninterested in the straight blues, and desirous to embrace a bit extra of the British-Invasion-type rock music that was infiltrating America on the time, Dusty and Beard moved to Houston, the place they subsequently teamed up with guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons of psychedelic-rockers Shifting Sidewalks. Collectively, the trio took their mixed Freddie King, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf influences, cranked up their amps, imbued them with a rock ‘n’ roll perspective, and ZZ High was born.
They launched their first album, the cheeky-titled, ZZ High’s First Album, in 1971, which captured their fledgling rock-infused blues sound. But it surely was their third album, Tres Hombres, launched in 1973, that includes the songs, “La Grange,” “Waitin’ for the Bus,” and “Jesus Simply Left Chicago,” that cemented their repute as innovators. Maybe it was Hill’s early basis in singing that allowed him to hone a bass skillset that embodies the instrument’s most elementary position: supporting the melody. His vocal capability, finest represented on the 1975 Fandango! single, “Tush,” the band’s first High 20 hit, and one among their most enduring songs, appears to have positioned emphasis on indelible really feel, relatively than technical prowess. He used that very same strategy when enjoying bass. Try any of the aforementioned tunes for a pattern of his nasty grooves and dynamic tone. What he is enjoying could appear easy, however attempt to seize that really feel. That is not one thing you simply choose up. That comes from being steeped in a selected life-style and tradition, comprised primarily of incessant touring, and rising up provincially, in Texas.
Dusty Hill circa 1975 enjoying the cornerstone of his sound: a classic 1970s Fender P bass he purchased in a Dallas pawnshop.
Photograph by Phil McAuliffe / Frank White Photograph Company
ZZ High had a profitable ’70s run earlier than taking a 3-12 months hiatus and reemerging within the early ’80s with lengthy beards and new data right into a burgeoning, but welcoming, MTV music-video period. If Tres Hombres put them on the map as musical innovators in 1973, it was 1983’s Eliminator that turned them into cultural icons a decade later. Although the manufacturing was chastised by blues purists for having synthesizers and drum machines, the band’s genuine blues roots nonetheless undergird the fabric, and tunes like “Legs,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Gimme All Your Lovin'” solidified their place inside the annals of popular culture. And, in spite of everything, as Dusty Hill says himself within the Banger documentary: “We by no means mentioned we had been a blues band. We’re interpreters of the blues.” In 2004, ZZ High was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.
It seems the band will keep it up with longtime guitar tech Elwood Francis taking on bass duties, as he did on July 23 on the Village Commons in New Lenox, Illinois, when Dusty was pressured to take a seat out resulting from a hip damage.
YouTube It
On this 2016 efficiency, ZZ High’s unchanged lineup—since 1969—of bassist Dusty Hill, guitarist Billy Gibbons, and drummer Frank Beard sound simply as contemporary on “Gimme All Your Lovin'” as they did when it got here out in 1983. Delight in Hill’s on pointe vocal concord and catch his all-fingers-on-deck bass enjoying across the 1:20 mark.
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