R.I.P. Bobby Whitlock, co-founder of Derek And The Dominos
The Stax-trained keyboardist was 77.
(Photo by Herb Kossover/Getty Images)
Bobby Whitlock has died. The co-founder of Derek And The Dominos, who, across his eclectic career, went from a fly-on-the-wall at Stax Records to backing up George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and The Rolling Stones, among others, writing and performing some of the 1970s’ most beloved rock songs. His manager, Carol Kaye, confirmed that he died of cancer. He was 77.
“How do you express in but a few words the grandness of one man who came from abject poverty in the south to heights unimagined in such a short time?” Whitlock’s wife, Coco Carmel Whitlock, said in a statement to CBS News. “As he would always say: ‘Life is what you make it, so take it and make it beautiful.’ And he did. Farewell, my Love, I’ll see you in my dreams.”
Born in Memphis in 1948, Whitlock started playing music as a teenager, performing with his band, The Counts. The band would cover Stax songs and caught the attention of artists like Wilson Pickett and Booker T. & The M.G’s. He became the first white artist signed to Stax HIP label in the label’s attempt to “cash in on contemporary pop.” But Whitlock wasn’t much of a fan of the British invasion. He was into Memphis soul, and the signing allowed him to sit in on some of Stax’s legendary recording sessions. Eventually, Stax session bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn took Whitlock to see husband and wife singer-songwriters Delaney & Bonnie. Whitlock played keyboards and sang on the group’s first two albums, Home and Accept No Substitute, but, perhaps more significantly, the couple introduced the keyboardist to Eric Clapton. In 1969, Bonnie & Delaney & Friends were touring with one of Clapton’s supergroups, Blind Faith. After the tour, Whitlock was out of the job and returned to England, where he and Clapton began writing what would become Derek And The Dominos’ Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs.
“I learned from the best,” Whitlock said in 2012. “I’m probably the only person in the world that actually had hands-on guitar instructions from Eric Clapton and Duane Allman and Delaney Bramlett and George Harrison, that’s for sure. Where they’d say, ‘No, Bobby, put your hands here, it goes like this.'”
