Dusty Hill 1949-2021 – Top Man

When ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill left us on July 27, he left a legacy like few others. Jamie Blaine pays tribute, and we revisit words of wisdom from Hill himself

- Photograph by Ygor Vidyashev

I grew up down Texas way, working summers at my father’s sawmill, and scraping together minimum wage to buy a beat-up SG bass. The fretboard pyrotechnics of Sheehan and Lee were beyond my reach, but inspiration came slithering across the yard one scorching afternoon through the screen door of a nearby rib shack.

As I unloaded lumber from a boxcar, the bluesman growled about gold tooth displays and beauticians at the wheel of his V8 Ford, the backbeat matching the loping rhythm of our sawmill’s conveyor chain. Heat waves shimmied on the tracks as epiphany struck from the percolating bass, laying a muddy groove wide as the West Texas plains, with a mind-blowing breakdown at the end that was both bad and nationwide.

The band, of course, was ZZ Top—but copping bassist Dusty Hill’s parts proved to be a different kind of tricky. I dug into their back catalog, discovering that his approach wasn’t so much a matter of technique as attitude. He owned the pocket and dug that trench deep, paving a foundation with gusto and restraint, stuttering licks in empty spaces and a funky syncopation engineered to make backsides move. There was plenty of flash and wit in ZZ’s clothes and stage shows, but the Top’s bottom end was all business.

Joseph Michael ‘Dusty’ Hill was born on May 19, 1949, playing the cello in school band and picking up bass at the age of 13, when his older brother Rocky started a combo called The Warlocks.