Chris Ethridge's Nudie Suit, Once Owned by Elton John, Reunited with Flying Burrito Brothers' Suits

Thursday, July 20, 2023, the Museum celebrated the reunion of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ four Nudie suits—the iconic suits worn by Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, Pete Kleinow, and Chris Ethridge on the album cover of “The Gilded Palace of Sin.” Together again for the first time in more than fifty years, Chris Ethridge’s long-lost suit was reunited with the three others in a special ceremony.

Ethridge’s rose-embroidered, rhinestone-accented suit was reported stolen from a car in 1969 and assumed unrecoverable. But its recent appearance on an auction site led Chris Ethridge’s daughter, Necia Ethridge, to purchase it. In the process, she learned that Elton John purchased the suit from Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in 1970. John can be seen wearing it in his 1971 “Top of the Pops” television performance and on the record sleeve of his 1972 “Rocket Man” single.

Michael Gray, the museum’s vice president of Museum Services and co-curator of the “Western Edge” exhibit, provided remarks on the historical context around the suits, and Necia Ethridge spoke about her father’s musical legacy.

Chris Ethridge’s granddaughter, Emma Atkinson, sang “She,” accompanied by longtime Ethridge family friends Adam Box, drummer for Brothers Osborne, and Patrick Sansone, multi-instrumentalist for Wilco, along with Box’s fellow bandmates Jason Graumlich (guitar) and Pete Sternberg (bass). Sansone capped the event with a stirring performance of “Hot Burrito #1.” Also in attendance were Manuel Cuevas, who was head designer at Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in L.A. and created the famous suits, and Phil Kaufman, who was road manager for the Flying Burrito Brothers and reported the suits stolen from his station wagon in 1969.

See all four reunited suits in “Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock,” open through May 2025. Reserve tickets at CountryMusicHallofFame.org.