“Chet was there virtually from the beginning and remained throughout Rolling Stone‘s golden years,” said Jann Wenner, the magazine’s founding editor and publisher who remains head of its parent company, Wenner Media. “Chet was very much inside the Rolling Stone family at that time, and was well-loved by several writers and editors.”
One of those was Paul Scanlon, who was Flippo’s managing editor. Scanlon said that while Flippo was a versatile music writer, he was most passionate about country music’s convergence with rock. “He was the only person paying attention to county at first,” said Scanlon. “His first cover story was on (Texas country-rocker) Doug Sahm, and in 1973, he wrote a story called Country Music: The Rock and Roll Influence.‘”
Mark Kemp, “Famed music journalist Chet Flippo, 69, dies” (The Tennessean)
There’s a great recent picture of Chet here, links to some other tributes here. Also, an interesting 1976 piece on Dolly Parton from the archives.
RockCritics.com 
cf. a fine tribute here by the invaluable Margaret Moser: http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/music/2013-06-20/rip-chet-flippo/
Worth reading for any curious rockcritics.com folks:
Chester (Chet) Flippo, “Rock Journalism and Rolling Stone,” Master’s Thesis, School of Journalism,. University of Texas-Austin, 1974.
Michael, is this available online? Don’t see a link with your comment, and nothing via Google that I can see. I’d like to read it, though.
I think it only exists at the UT-Austin library in hard copy (!), but Flippo published a few articles from it:
“The History of Rolling Stone: Part I,” Popular Music and Society 3, 4 (1974): 159-188.
“The History of Rolling Stone: Part II,” Popular Music and Society 3, 4 (1974): 258-80
“The History of Rolling Stone: Part III,” Popular Music and Society 3, 4 (1974): 281-98.
Best,
Michael