Flying Burrito Bros's long-lost Nudie suit found

For many fans of Americana and alt-country music The Flying Burrito Brothers' 1969 debut album "The Gilded Palace of Sin" defined the era of LA 1960s country rock. Its iconic cover features the band dressed in their hippie rock versions of Hollywood tailor Nudie Cohn country and western rhinestone suits. Instead of wagon wheels and cactus, the jeweled suits were wildly embroidered with marijuana leaves, nude women, flaming suns, and dinosaurs.

50 years later, the sound west coast country rock was honored in Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame in the 'Western Edge" retrospective show. Among the artifacts were three of the famous FBB suits. But where was the long-lost fourth suit worn by bassist Chris Ethridge?

Stolen from the trunk of a car 52 years ago, it was recently found hiding in plain sight — in singer Elton John's closet. The suit was re-united with the collection and now on display in the "Western Edge" show.

In the decades since Ethridge's suit mysteriously vanished, the ones belonging to Burrito Brothers Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow remained in the possession of their families (Parsons died in 1973, Kleinow in 2007, and Ethridge in 2012). Last year, all three, encased in glass, became the centerpiece of Western Edge, an exhibit focused on California country-rock at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. But Ethridge's was considered a goner for good. Kaufman had filed a police report but with no results. The museum chased leads that led nowhere. "It was a whole series of dead ends," says Mick Buck, curatorial director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. "People who thought they might know, it turned out they didn't know. Someone said it was destroyed. But nobody really knew. We had to abandon the idea of having the four suits together."