Revinylization

Before the beards, before the fuzzy spinning guitars, before the "Legs" video, there was an electric blues trio, that little ol' band from Texas, ZZ Top. In five years in the 1970s, they made their finest albums and found their first success. They came, they conquered, and gargantuan blues riffs—not to mention the concept of the power trio—were never the same.

Anthologized and reissued many times since their release—Tres Hombres alone has been reissued on vinyl three times just since 2006—the band's first five albums have been reissued again in an impressive, limited-edition boxed set from Rhino called From the Top: 1971–1976. The album jackets are glossy, heavy-gauge board. The 180gm high-quality black-vinyl LPs, pressed at Optimal Media in Germany, are substantial and run dead quiet. Using the original master tapes and not the altered and inferior digital remixes from the 1980s, the lacquers, which were cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, improve the sound of all five albums audibly though not dramatically. Best of all are the liner notes, newly written for each album and presented in two-page inserts housed opposite the vinyl in the gatefold jackets.

The trio of guitarist/vocalist William Frederick "Billy" Gibbons, bassist/vocalist Joe Michael "Dusty" Hill, and drummer Frank Lee Beard started in 1969 after Gibbons's band the Moving Sidewalks dissolved. Signed to London Records, the group's debut, ZZ Top's First Album, was released early in 1971. Rio Grande Mud followed a year later. A mashup of Z.Z. Hill and B.B. King, the band's name was initially going to be Z.Z. King, but Gibbons decided that B.B. King was at the "top" of the blues world, and ZZ Top was a catchier more original move. The performances on the first two albums are reserved and tentative. In the new liner notes to the first album, Gibbons describes the band's sound as "12-bar blues or bust," a key to why those albums sound fairly one dimensional, still searching for a personality.

Captured on an Electrodyne recording console at Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas, the first two albums have always had sound issues. In the new liner notes, recording engineer Robin Hood Brians says, "It was all about getting it wicked sounding, even through a little radio." Yet the frequencies on both albums are rounded rather than sharp, and both have a closed-in, canned sound. These new pressings mitigate but don't eliminate sound issues that are mostly intrinsic to the source.

The most crucial change surrounding 1973's Tres Hombres—the finest example of the band's original mix of boogie'n'blues crossed with Southern and power rock—was the move to Ardent Studios in Memphis. There, better gear and the engineering team of John Hampton, Joe Hardy, and Terry Manning took charge of the band's recorded sound. In the new liner notes by James Austin of Rhino Records, in which Gibbons is extensively interviewed, Manning says, "The aim was molding a powerful and tight sound with the band, and just as sonically pure as possible." He concludes, "Fortunately, it took hold, working some magic." Another sonic tweak was the addition of a vintage Fender bass guitar for Hill, bought in a pawn shop in Dallas.

Filled with such now-classic tracks as "Jesus Just Left Chicago" and "Precious and Grace," Tres Hombres is best known for two flat-out rockers, the ultimate frat house anthem "Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers" and the most transcendent track of their entire career, "La Grange." Finding original pressings of the album in good shape is difficult, because it became such a popular party album. With the puzzling, stuck-for-a-line couplet in its last verse, "Soundin' a lot like they got House Congressional/Cause we're experimental and professional," "Beer Drinkers" captures a time in the band's existence when, as Gibbon puts it in the liner notes, "Hellraising is a mild description of the goings-on around that time." Although the band was sued for infringement in 1992 by the co-writer of John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun" (the case was dismissed when the song was ruled to be in the public domain), the famous three chords of "La Grange" are played with ruthless gusto. Speaking about the tune in the new liner notes, Gibbons simply says, "There's gold in them there blues."

As stylistic reach goes, the second half of 1975's Fandango! is the band's most adventurous album side. Fueled by the confidence engendered by Tres Hombres and needing to quickly follow up on that album's success, Fandango! is half live and half studio. The live tracks were recorded at The Warehouse in New Orleans in April 1974, by a trio of engineers from the Record Plant Recording Truck assisted by Terry Manning, and eventually mastered by Bob Ludwig. But it's side 2, the studio side, that shows the growth in the band's songwriting as seen in a jumpy tribute to border radio, "Heard It on the X"; a creaky, near-novelty song, "Mexican Blackbird"; and one of their best ballads, "Blue Jean Blues." The single "Tush," which Gibbons says in the liners was inspired by a soundcheck of Roy Head's "Treat Her Right," came quickly and the band then "immediately scripted the impromptu lines in a cool three minutes."

Viewed through the lens of time, 1976's Tejas, the last album in the set, has the best sound but weaker songwriting, and a turn toward twangy country music doomed any chance of it achieving success. It was again recorded by Manning, whose original mixes have become the go-to source for reissues.

After Tejas, the songwriting ran dry, and the band fell into repeating themselves. Rescued by MTV in the '80s, the trio took to embracing gimmicks, became caricatures, and got rich. The prelude to that glitzy clownishness, From the Top: 1971–1976 is ZZ Top when making music was still their goal.