“Devil in Disguise” began as “Christine’s Tune,” written by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman and recorded by the Flying Burrito Brothers at A&M Studios in Hollywood in late 1968. It opens the band’s first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, which A&M released on 6 February 1969. According to Rolling Stone, the Christine of the title was Christine Frka of the GTOs, the all-female group Frank Zappa produced, who also appears on the cover of his Hot Rats. By the time A&M issued the band’s live album Last of the Red Hot Burritos in May 1972, the opening track was listed as “Devil in Disguise.” Hillman later said of the change, “We felt it was really terrible to have her name there. It was not the kindest lyric.”
The chorus says it outright: she’s a devil in disguise, you can see it in her eyes, she’s telling dirty lies. The verses list her ways. A woman like that hates the man she’s with and doesn’t know what makes a man a man. She’ll talk about the times she’s been with you and speak your name to everyone she can. Unhappiness is her close companion, and her world is full of jealousy and doubt. Seeing someone cry is what she enjoys, and still she is the kind you can’t live without. Her number turns up in your pocket every time you reach for a dime. Call her if you like, the singer says, but the moon is full and you’re wasting time.
Bluegrass bands took it up within a few years. Bottle Hill opened their 1972 Biograph LP A Rumor in Their Own Time with it. On 2 April 1973 J. D. Crowe and the New South recorded it at Starday’s Nashville studio, with Larry Rice singing lead, Tony Rice tenor and Crowe baritone, though Starday did not release the session until 1977. A decade after that first session, Tony Rice sang lead on it again with the Bluegrass Album Band. They recorded it at 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley in January 1983, with Doyle Lawson singing tenor, J. D. Crowe on banjo, Bobby Hicks on fiddle, Jerry Douglas on dobro and Todd Phillips on bass, and it opens The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 3: California Connection (Rounder, 1983). Country Gazette recorded it for All This & Money Too! (1979), and Cherryholmes for Cherryholmes III: Don’t Believe (2008).
