ZZ Top Drummer Frank Beard Dies at 77

Frank Beard, the drummer who held the rhythmic center of ZZ Top for more than fifty years, died at 77, leaving behind a legacy quietly essential to one of rock and roll's most enduring partnerships. He was there at the beginning — one of three men who decided, in the early 1970s, what Texas blues-rock could sound like — and he remained there until the end. His passing closes a chapter not just for a band, but for a particular strain of American musical identity that never needed to reinvent itself because it had gotten something right the first time.