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FILE - Dusty Hill, left, and Billy Gibbons from U.S rock band ZZ Top perform at the Glastonbury music festival in Somerset, England, June 24, 2016. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (Photo by Jonathan Short/Invision/AP, File)

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FILE - Dusty Hill of ZZ Top performs during the VH1 Rock Honors concert in Las Vegas on May 12, 2007. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

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FILE - Dusty Hill, of ZZ Top, performs before the start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup series auto race in Concord, N.C., May 24, 2015. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (AP Photo/Mike McCarn, File)

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FILE - Dusty Hill of U.S. rock band ZZ Top performs on stage during their first concert in Germany in Hamburg, northern Germany, on Oct. 8, 2002. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (AP Photo/Christof Stache, File)

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FILE - Dusty Hill of ZZ Top performs during the Stagecoach Festival on April 25, 2015, in Indio, Calif. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (Photo by Paul A. Hebert/Invision/AP, File)

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FILE - Bassist and vocalist Dusty Hill, from the US rock band, ZZ Top performs at the F1 Rocks concert on Sept. 25, 2009, in Singapore. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (AP Photo/Joan Leong, File)

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FILE - Dusty Hill, of ZZ Top, performs during the Crossroads Guitar Festival on June 26, 2010, in Chicago. ZZ Top has announced that Hill, one of the Texas blues trio's bearded figures and bassist, has died at his Houston home. He was 72. In a Facebook post, bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard revealed Wednesday, July 28, 2021, that Hill had died in his sleep. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)

ZZ Top: Bearded bassist Dusty Hill dies in his sleep at 72

By Associated Press Houston

PUBLISHED 6:20 PM ET Jul. 28, 2021

HOUSTON (AP) — ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill, the long-bearded bassist for the million-selling Texas blues rock trio known for such hits as “Legs” and “Gimme All Your Lovin'," has died at age 72.

In a Facebook post Wednesday, guitarist Billy Gibbons and drummer Frank Beard said Hill died in his sleep. They didn’t give a cause of death, but a July 21 post on the band's website said Hill was “on a short detour back to Texas, to address a hip issue.” At that time, the band said that 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, naming themselves in part after blues singer Z.Z. Hill and influenced by the British power trio Cream. Their debut release, “ZZ Top’s First Album,” came out in 1970. Three years later, they broke through commercially with “La Grange,” a funky blues song in the style of Slim Harpo’s ”Shake Your Hips" that paid tribute to the Chicken Ranch, a notorious brothel outside of the Texas town of La Grange.

The band went on to have such hits as “Tush” in 1975, and the 1980s songs “Sharp Dressed Man,” ”Legs," “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Sleeping Bag.” 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. Their million-selling albums included ”Eliminator," “Afterburner” and “Antenna.”

ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, introduced by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

“These cats are steeped in the blues, so am I," Richards said. “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 Gibbons and Hill sporting long, wispy beards, became so familiar, in part thanks to their MTV videos in the 1980s, that it was the subject of a New Yorker cartoon and a joke on “The Simpsons.”

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An earlier version of this story was corrected to reflect that ZZ Top was formed in 1969, not the late 1970s.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.