A Burrito or more for your last supper?

If the dismissal of Gram Parsons and the disappointing showing of The Flying Burrito Bros. weren't enough to do the band in, Stephen Stills was. Since the last time we've seen them, founding member "Sneaky" Pete had left the band to concentrate - like Chris Ethridge before him - on better paying studio session work. The pedal steel was now manned by Al Perkins. Bernie Leadon was the next to go (replaced by old Hillman comrade Kenny Wertz), leaving the band to back up Linda Ronstadt, where he ran into a couple of other musicians struggling to make their mark (Glenn Frey, Don Henley & Randy Meisner) and nothing was ever heard of these four guys again. Nope, nothing. Like, ever. 

Hillman - realizing that he had a band capable of paying his first love, bluegrass, right under his nose - asked veteran fiddle player Byron Berline to join, finally adding Kenny Bush on bass, so Hillman could concentrate on playing mandolin. In mid-1972 Stills invited the core Burritos Hillman, Roberts, Perkins and Berline down to Florida to jam with him, then issued official invites to Hillman, Perkins and Berline. The latter declined, but Hillman and Perkins agreed, bringing the Flying Burrito Brothers to a temporary end.

In order to wrap up their contract with A &M Records, the Burritos still owed them a final album, and it was the classic 'live album as contract filler' situation. The Last Of The Red Hot Burritos was an okay album and a pretty good reflection of the bluegrass-heavy stage show at the time, but as a final statement of the band it was...relatively underwhelming. This got the One Buck Guy thinking: What if, instead of bringing out a live album, A & M had insisted on bringing out a studio platter as the final Burrito record? This is what Last Supper is, an album compiled from leftovers to fulfill their contract. 

The band had cut a number of songs before and after The Flying Burrito Bros., about two thirds of an album. In order to fill up the album, why not go back to the archives and the Gram Parsons era, adding three tracks from the loose cover material sessions they did right before or after Burrito Deluxe (there's conflicting information concerning the time line here). In this way, Last Supper would also pay homage to the band's entire era, not just the late-era Hillman-Roberts version of the band. 

Last Supper opens with the familiar fuzz of Sneaky Pete's steel, so "Did You See" must've come from right before The Flying Burrito Bros. From this reminder of the Burrito sound we delve right into their C&W standard war chest, with Parsons' take on "Dim Lights", before highlighting Roberts ("In My Own Small Way", later issued on Roberts' solo album) and Sneaky Pete ("Beat The Heat"), sandwiched around Hillman's take on Jesse Winchester's "Payday", before digging out the Gene Clark-led outtake "Here Tonight" to close out what would habe been side a.

Side b would then open with a fuzzy version of the Stones' "Hony Tonk Women", courtesy of Parsons, of course, before adding another cover sung by Hillman (Harlan Howard's "Pick me Up On Your Way Down"), a cameo by Bernie Leadon to sing lead on John Fogerty's "Lodi", Parsons' excellent take on "To Love Somebody" and Roberts' "Feel Good Music", closing with a reminder of the heartfelt beauty Parsons could bring to the band, on a fragment of Dylan's "I Shall Be Released". 

So, Last Supper as conceived gives you a great, democratic overview of The Flying Burrito Brothers as they were from 1969 to 1972. It could and would have been a fine way to say goodbye. But either way the goodbye was only temporary, as we will see in our next chapter of the ongoing Burritos saga here at One Buck Records Burrito Week...