Rick Roberts

Rick Roberts had the good fortune to become part of the Flying Burrito Brothers while they were still within hailing distance of their origins -- and the bad fortune to emerge in country-rock just as the latter was starting to become passé. Born in Florida in the 1940s, Roberts came of age amid the first wave of rock & roll and by the 1960s was gravitating to the folk-rock sounds of the Byrds and the Beau Brummels. He took up the guitar and found that he was a more than competent singer and seemed to have a talent for songwriting as well. Roberts moved around as a teenager, living in Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and Colorado, and picked up more experience singing in any clubs that would let him. He finally decided to try his luck in the big time by hitchhiking his way to California in 1969. He began performing at smaller clubs in the Los Angeles area and made a lot of friends among the second-generation folk-rockers who were filling those performance rosters, all of them, like Roberts, waiting for their respective big breaks. It was at one of those shows that he was spotted by Ed Tickner, who managed the Flying Burrito Brothers. At the time, in early 1970, the Burritos were looking for someone to replace Gram Parsons, the group's co-founder, whose erratic personal and professional behavior had gotten him dropped from the band. Roberts had a finely expressive voice and was a good acoustic guitarist, and seemed the best prospect. Tickner thought so, and co-founder Chris Hillman thought so, but Roberts himself wasn't so certain. He'd played and sung in a folk-rock idiom, but the more countrified sound of the Burritos was not something he fully embraced or saw himself as contributing to effectively. Hillman, who'd made a similar stretch from a different direction in...