ZZ Top - Tejas (1976) -In Memory of Dusty Hill
I’ve been listening to a lot of ZZ Top this week in light of the news of Dusty Hill’s passing. I was never a huge ZZ Top fan. As a kid growing up in the 1980s they were perpetually on the radio. Since then they've been a mainstay of classic rock radio. As I've grown older and gotten deeper into the blues, I've come to appreciate ZZ Top a lot more. Their first 4 or 5 albums are really good blues rock records.
I’ve streamed most of them this week. The only album I own a physical copy of is their 1976 album Tejas, which I found at a used record shop a few years ago. Tejas is not the strongest of their 1970s albums. For that I’d probably name Tres Hombres or Rio Grande Mud. You also can’t go wrong with their first album. Still, there’s a lot of great straight ahead Texas-style blues rock, and even some country and western on this album.
5 Highlights
Arrested While Driving Blind: This was the “hit”, albeit minor, from this album. The tune feels very 1950s rock and roll to me, done in the style of Hill, Gibbons, and Beard, of course. Forget the fact that it very likely is a song about driving under the influence. It’s a fun one to listen to and deserves a place in your ZZ Top playlist.
Enjoy and Get On: Do you want a Texas boogie? Here’s your Texas boogie. This is a fun tune.
Pan Am Highway Blues: Another great blues shuffle featuring both Hill and Gibbons on vocals with some killer guitar licks and really interesting drum parts from Frank Beard.
She’s a Heartbreaker: Here’s your Texas country. And with lyrics like “She’s a heartbreaker, She’s a love taker,” I’m not accusing Pat Benatar of anything necessarily, but…
Asleep in the Desert: The albums closer is a slowed down western sounding instrumental track that elicits images of the wide open desert, cactus, tumbleweeds, and everything else. Strangely, though it predates Dire Straits, I get a Mark Knopfler feel to Gibbons’ guitar work on this one. There’s also some Robert Plant “Big Log” energy present, which it also predates. It’s a cool way to close out this album, which I think has a very different, almost country feel, from their other 1970s releases.
Perfect Pairing
I enjoyed this great album from that little ol’ band from Texas with a little ol’ whiskey from Texas: Devils River Bourbon Whiskey.