Tres Hombres

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Tres Hombres
ZZ Top - Tres Hombres.jpg
Studio album by
ZZ Top
ReleasedJuly 26, 1973[citation needed]
StudioBrian Studios & Ardent Studios, Memphis, Tennessee
Genre
Length33:26
LabelLondon
ProducerBill Ham
ZZ Top chronology
Rio Grande Mud
(1972) 		Tres Hombres
(1973) 		Fandango!
(1975)
Singles from Tres Hombres
  1. "La Grange"
    Released: 1973
Song sample
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21-second excerpt of "La Grange"
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Tres Hombres is the third studio album by the American rock band ZZ Top. It was released by London Records in July 1973 and was the band's first collaboration with engineer Terry Manning. It was the band's commercial breakthrough; in the US, the album entered the top ten while the single "La Grange" reached number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Background and release[]

Frontman Billy Gibbons said of the album:

We could tell that we had something special. The record became quite the turning point for us. The success was handwriting on the wall, because from that point we became honorary citizens of Memphis.[1]

At the height of ZZ Top's success in the mid-1980s, a digitally remixed version of the recording was released on CD and the original 1973 mix was no longer issued. The remix version created controversy among fans because it significantly changed the sound of the instruments, especially drums. The remix version was used on all early CD copies and was the only version available for over 20 years. A remastered and expanded edition of the album was released on February 28, 2006, which contains three bonus live tracks. The 2006 edition is the first CD version to use Manning's original 1973 mix. Subsequent releases on digital platforms such as iTunes have used the original mix as well.

In addition to the standard 2-channel stereo version, a four-channel quadraphonic version was also released in 1973 in the Quad 8 8-track tape and Q4 reel-to-reel formats.[2]

Reception[]

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic4.5/5 stars[3]
Pitchfork9.0/10[4]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide3/5 stars[5]
The Daily VaultB+[6]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music4/5 stars[7]

The album was released in July 1973 to a lukewarm reception. Steve Apple in a September 1973 review for Rolling Stone felt that while the "Southern rock & roll sound" was becoming popular, ZZ Top themselves were "only one of several competent Southern rocking bands", though they had "an advantage over most white rockers" because they "sound black". Apple felt that ZZ Top had "the dynamic rhythms that only the finest of the three-piece bands can cook up. Billy Gibbons plays a tasty Duane Allman lead with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard pounding out the funky bottom", and were "one of the most inventive of the three-piece rockers" but wondered when "audiences will get tired of hearing the same ... 'Poot yawl hans together' patter."[8]

Legacy[]

In 2000, the album was voted number 501 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.[9] In 2003, it was ranked number 498 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and in 2012 ranked at number 490 on a revised list.[10] The album peaked at number 8 on the Billboard 200. In July 2013, 40 years after its release, the album was described by Andrew Dansby in the Houston Chronicle as "... full of characters and doings so steeped in caricature – yet presented straight-faced – as to invite skepticism. The album is stuffed with color and flavor, much like its famous gate-fold photo on the inside: a gut-busting couple of plates of food from the much-beloved but now-closed Leo's Mexican Restaurant on South Shepherd near Westheimer."[11] AllMusic commented that "Tres Hombres is the record that brought ZZ Top their first top ten record, making them stars in the process. It couldn't have happened to a better record", and rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars.[12] Andy Beta of Pitchfork awarded the album 9.0 out of 10, writing that, "ZZ Top's 1973 breakthrough was a masterful melding of complementary styles, cramming Southern rock and blues boogie through the band's own idiosyncratic filter."[13]

The song "Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers" was covered by British rock band Motörhead on their 1977 EP of the same name.[14] "Jesus Just Left Chicago" has been performed 81 times in concert by American jam band Phish since 1987, and their version of the song appeared on their 1997 live album Slip Stitch and Pass and four volumes of their Live Phish archival concert series.[15]

Recording and singles[]

The two tracks "Waitin' for the Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago" nearly seamlessly segue, one into the other. Houston Chronicle entertainment writer, Andrew Dansby, wrote in a 2013 article that this fusing-together of the two songs wasn't the original plan. Dansby claimed in his article that the album's engineer was splicing tape and cut too much, leaving the two songs without any gap between them.[11] The album's engineer Terry Manning, who performed the edit, counter-claimed in a 2017 blog post that this edit was no accident. Although Manning admitted that this specific edit was not planned beforehand, as an engineer he was "...always looking very carefully at the timings between songs ...counting time, feeling how different time sigs (signatures) go together, different keys, different feels..." Manning wrote that he, "...tried several things to see how those two (songs) would go together" when it dawned on him that they could "...come together as one song, exactly as if played that way." Manning wrote that when he initially presented this specific edit, Billy Gibbons loved it but the album's producer Bill Ham was confused and wary of it, "...but after several plays, it was obvious (to) everyone that there was no other way they could ever exist again."[16]

The only single released from the album in most countries was "La Grange" (b/w "Just Got Paid" from the band's second album Rio Grande Mud) which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1974.[17]

Track listing[]

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Waitin' for the Bus"Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill2:59
2."Jesus Just Left Chicago"Gibbons, Hill, Rube Beard3:29
3."Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers"Gibbons, Hill, Beard3:23
4."Master of Sparks"Gibbons3:33
5."Hot, Blue and Righteous"Gibbons3:14
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Move Me on Down the Line"Gibbons, Hill2:30
2."Precious and Grace"Gibbons, Hill, Beard3:09
3."La Grange"Gibbons, Hill, Beard3:51
4."Shiek"Gibbons, Hill4:04
5."Have You Heard?"Gibbons, Hill3:14
2006 remaster bonus tracks
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
11."Waitin' for the Bus" (live)Gibbons, Hill2:42
12."Jesus Just Left Chicago" (live)Gibbons, Hill, Beard4:03
13."La Grange" (live)Gibbons, Hill, Beard4:44

Personnel[]

Production[]

Charts[]

Chart (1974) Peak
position
Australia (Kent Music Report)[18] 36
United States (Billboard 200) 8

Certifications[]

Region Certification Certified units/sales
Canada (Music Canada)[19] Gold 50,000^
United States (RIAA)[20] Gold 500,000^

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

References[]

  1. ^ Bosso, Joe (3 June 2013). "Billy Gibbons talks ZZ Top: The Complete Studio Albums (1970-1990)". MusicRadar.
  2. ^ "ZZ Top – Tres Hombres". Discogs. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
  3. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Tres Hombres – ZZ Top; AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  4. ^ Beta, Andy (June 25, 2017). "ZZ Top: Tres Hombres". Pitchfork. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  5. ^ Cross, Charles R. (2004). "ZZ Top". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 907–908. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  6. ^ Thelen, Christopher (2019). "The Daily Vault Music Reviews : Tres Hombres". dailyvault.com. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
  7. ^ Larkin, Colin (2007). Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
  8. ^ Apple, Steve (September 13, 1973). "ZZ Top: Tres Hombres". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on October 2, 2007.
  9. ^ Larkin, Colin (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rd ed.). Virgin Books. p. 176. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6.
  10. ^ "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 2012. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Dansby, Andrew (July 31, 2013). "40 years after its release, the allure of 'Tres Hombres' lives on". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
  12. ^ Tres Hombres at AllMusic. Retrieved June 11, 2012.
  13. ^ "ZZ Top: Tres Hombres Album Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2017-08-27.
  14. ^ Burridge, Alan Illustrated Collector's Guide to Motörhead Published: 1995, Collector's Guide Publishing p70. ISBN 0-9695736-2-6
  15. ^ "Jesus Just Left Chicago Every Time Played - Phish.net". phish.net. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
  16. ^ "Tres Hombres". PRW Forums. Retrieved 10 August 2017.
  17. ^ "The Hot 100, The week of June 29, 1974". Billboard.
  18. ^ Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrated ed.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p. 348. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.
  19. ^ "Canadian album certifications – ZZ Top – Tres Hombres". Music Canada. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
  20. ^ "American album certifications – ZZ Top – Tres Hombres". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
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