Album Notes

The 'Red Hot' Burrito Brothers - Mendocino, 1974-76.

The Flying Burrito Brothers helped forge the connection between rock and country, and with their 1969 debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, they virtually invented the blueprint for country-rock. The name of the Burrito Brothers is, as Chris Ethridge did put it, "synonymous with the origins of country rock", and like another such band there at the beginning, the Byrds, they have a history that twists incestuously in and out of the Los Angeles country band and studio scene.

The first Burritos band was founded by Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons, both of whom broke away from the Byrds. Their band included Ethridge and Pete Kleinow, plus John Corneal. Hillman went on to greater fame with Steve Stills' Manassas and with the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. Over the course of the years the band went through various personnel changes and included at times Bernie Leadon, now with the Eagles; Rick Roberts, who left to play with Steve Stills; and Al Perkins and Byron Berline, who travelled with a lattter-day assemblage of the band, and later as Country Gazette, to Europe.

The Burritos' name was in limbo for a couple of years but was resurrected in '74 by two of the original members, Chris Ethridge (bass) and 'Sneaky' Pete (pedal steel) along with ex-Byrd Gene Parsons (drums), Joel Scott Hill (guitar and vocals) and Gib Guilbeau (fiddle).