North American syndicated rock radio show, InTheStudio: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands, celebrates ZZ Top's 1973 classic, Tres Hombres.

Says host Redbeard: "The late legendary ZZ Top manager and producer Bill Ham was an old-school former independent record promoter from Houston that could smell a hit from a thousand miles away - but he  didn’t hear the band’s first and certainly most important hit back in 1973, and almost missed the breakthrough of what has become America’s longest running original rock band in history. You see, Ham knew that radio station airplay was the key to success in those days, so band managers like himself worked very closely with record label promotion executives to “front load” the sequence of songs on an album to put the perceived hit songs first on an album.

"So when ZZ Top’s critical third album Tres Hombres came out in July 1973, if the  savvy manager had identified the heavily John Lee Hooker-inspired rave up “Lagrange” about a redlight roadhouse as truly Top 40 material, why would he have buried it as track #9 on the album?

"In this classic rock interview about their breakout third album, 1973’s Tres Hombres, guitarist/singer Billy Gibbons, bass player/singer Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard cover the topics of “Vampire Travel”; a three-legged beaver; blowing the roof off a New Orleans nightclub ; beer drinkers and hellraisers; “T” for Texas ,”T” for Tennessee ; wearing 60 pound Nudie suits while performing in summer at 3 in the afternoon in an Ohio cornfield… you know, all the rock ‘n’roll basics.

"ZZ Top covers pre-Viagra goat gland operations in Mexico; Southern Select beer ; the Mexican food feast photo in the original album cover fold-out; border radio XERF; and the “squank” ….just the usual rock cliches.

"In the conclusion to our  In The Studio special on the 1973 ZZ Top album Tres Hombres, the boys discuss the infamous Chicken Ranch outside of Houston, the inspiration for their breakout hit ”La Grange” and  years later the Broadway musical Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ; redneck roadsurfing from the back of a pickup truck in an iron cage in ”Master of Sparks“; Queen Bee barbeque; and why legendary University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal was not a ZZ TOP fan."

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