The Sound of Texas

Song 253: Somehow I managed to get past the 250 mark on this playlist before posting a song by that Little Ol' Band from Texas, so this week's track is 10 Dollar Man by ZZ Top, written by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard. It makes sense to follow up a Jimi Hendrix cut with a ZZ Top one because Jimi and ZZ lead guitarist Billy Gibbons had been friends, to such an extent that Jimi reportedly gave Billy a pink Stratocaster and mentioned in an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show that Gibbons would be the next big thing as a guitarist. That took a while to actually happen, but by the summer of '74 BG's guitar work was sizzling all over the airwaves on the single La Grange. Their next album Fandango the following year got almost everybody's attention with a huge hit all about Tush, and they followed that up a year later with Tejas, which is the Spanish word for their home state of Texas. As much as I had liked their earlier records, I felt that Tejas sounded even better than what came before. This track, which opened side 2 of the LP back in the vinyl days, features some interesting musical twists and turns, including a few intriguing opening riffs that hint at the song's groove before getting to it and a coda that plays off that groove by switching gears to move in a totally different direction for the fade out. I happened to catch ZZ Top on the Tejas tour when they played Chicago in the winter of '77, and they had a very entertaining stage show that included a live steer, a couple of vultures and some native Texas plants. I enjoyed the show, but I also couldn't help noticing that they cheated a bit on the sound. Being a musician, I could clearly hear, along with the sound of the drummer, bass player and guitarist that I saw performing, a second guitar in the mix, with no second guitarist on the stage. The woman who attended the show with me was also a singer, and she later confirmed to me that she had gotten the word through back channels that the band had indeed used a click track for the show. While I still have plenty of respect for Billy Gibbons as a player, I was disappointed that he hadn't found a way to translate his dual recorded parts into a single performance part, which made it all the more impressive when I saw Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac manage to do this a few months later (see Song 242). Still, I had a pretty good time at the show, and ZZ Top really did make me feel all right.