ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill dies in Houston at 72
AUSTIN, TEXAS - MAY 19: Singer-songwriter Dusty Hill of ZZ Top performs in concert during 'ZZ Top's 50th Anniversary Texas Bash' at Austin360 Amphitheater on May 19, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Rick Kern/WireImage)
HOUSTON - ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill has died in Houston at the age of 72, according to the band.
Hill passed away in his sleep at his home, according to a message posted to social media by bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard.
"We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top'. We will forever be connected to that ‘Blues Shuffle in C,’" the message reads. "You will be missed greatly, amigo. "
ZZ Top is on tour and scheduled to play six shows over the next week, including a concert Wednesday in South Carolina.
However, last Friday, the band said Hill was going back to Texas to "address a hip issue."
"Per Dusty’s request ‘The show must go on!’" the band wrote last week. At that time, the band said its longtime guitar tech, Elwood Francis, would fill in on bass, slide guitar and harmonica.
Born Joe Michael Hill in Dallas, he, Gibbons and Beard formed ZZ Top in Houston in 1969. The band released its first album, titled "ZZ Top’s First Album," in 1970. Three years later it scored its breakthrough hit, "La Grange," which is an ode to the Chicken Ranch, a notorious brothel outside of a Texas town by that name.
The band went on to chart the hits "Tush" in 1975, "Sharp Dressed Man," "Legs" and "Gimme All Your Lovin’" in 1983, and "Rough Boy" and "Sleeping Bag" in 1985.
The band’s 1976 "Worldwide Texas Tour," with its iconic Texas-shaped stage festooned with cactuses, snakes and longhorn cattle, was one of the decade’s most successful rock tours.
The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Said Rolling Stones lead guitarist Keith Richards in introducing the band to the Hall: "These cats are steeped in the blues, so am I. These cats know their blues and they know how to dress it up. When I first saw them, I thought, ‘I hope these guys are not on the run, because that disguise is not going to work.’"
That look — with all three members wearing dark sunglasses and the two frontmen sporting long, wispy beards — became so iconic as to be the subject of a New Yorker cartoon and a joke on "The Simpsons."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.