The quick, swinging pulse beneath "La Grange" and the heavy stride behind "Tush" came from Frank Beard, the drummer who made economy feel immense. Beard, a longtime member of ZZ Top and the rhythmic engine of the Texas trio for more than five decades, died in August 2026 at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, at 77. His publicist Bob Merlis confirmed the death to the Associated Press.

Beard was born in Frankston, Texas, on June 11, 1949, and grew up in Irving. He and bassist Dusty Hill learned the working life of a band together in American Blues, traveling the Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth circuit. Gibbons formed ZZ Top in Houston in 1969. Beard joined during the band's early lineup changes and brought Hill into the group, establishing a compact trio around Gibbons's guitar, Hill's bass and voice, and Beard's drums. The Texas State Historical Association records that Beard and Hill arrived together from American Blues when Gibbons rebuilt his group.

Their first ZZ Top concert, at a Knights of Columbus hall in Beaumont in February 1970, began a run that grew from southeast Texas dance halls into one of rock's most durable partnerships. Tres Hombres, released in 1973, became the band's first gold album, and "La Grange" carried its sound onto radio across the country. Beard's part was not ornamental. The rolling shuffle let the guitar snarl without losing the song's forward motion, a balance that became as identifiable as the trio's sunglasses and road-tested stage moves.

The scale around that beat kept expanding. ZZ Top's Worldwide Texas Tour in the 1970s put the musicians on a Texas-shaped stage alongside rattlesnakes, a buffalo, buzzards and cactus. Eliminator transformed the band's reach in 1983, folding synthesizers and programmed rhythms into its blues-rock core while "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs" became staples of early MTV. Through every production shift, Beard remained the live center of the songs, supplying the human push that connected the trio's bar-band beginnings to arenas.

His restraint was learned, not accidental. In a 2004 interview with Modern Drummer, Beard recalled playing with bluesmen Freddie King and Lightnin' Hopkins and once backing Chuck Berry. "I've learned to keep things simple," he said. That principle could be heard in the space he preserved inside ZZ Top's music: the beat struck firmly, the shuffle breathed, and the next guitar phrase always had somewhere to land.

Beard also carried the band's most durable visual joke. While Gibbons and Hill grew the long whiskers that became part of ZZ Top's silhouette, the musician actually named Beard did not match them. The contrast fit a group that treated its image with humor even as it approached the work with discipline. Behind the joke stood a musician who kept returning to the same two partners. In the 2019 documentary That Little Ol' Band from Texas, Beard said, "I've found the people I was meant to play with."

The industry eventually placed formal honors around that longevity. Keith Richards inducted Beard, Gibbons and Hill into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. The band earned three Grammy nominations, and its records reached more than 50 million in sales. Its later work still carried weight: La Futura reached No. 6 on the Billboard album chart in 2012, more than four decades after the trio formed. The defining Beard-Gibbons-Hill lineup remained together until Hill's death in 2021, a partnership that endured for more than half a century.

When Beard died, Gibbons described the drummer's contribution in direct musical terms: "His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top." That backbeat persists wherever "Tush" snaps into its shuffle, "La Grange" gathers speed, or the polished machinery of Eliminator rolls forward. Across the records from Tres Hombres to La Futura, Beard gave ZZ Top a foundation sturdy enough to carry Texas blues into changing decades without losing its gait.