Eric Clapton took to social media to remember Bobby Whitlock.
Check out Clapton's post about it here from his official Facebook page.
Keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock, best known as a member of Derek and the Dominos, passed away Sunday morning at his home in Ozona, Texas from cancer. He was 77.
His wife CoCo says, "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.
“My love Bobby looked at life as an adventure taking me by the hand leading me through a world of wonderment from music to poetry and painting.
“I feel his hands that were so intensely expressive and warm on my face and the small of my back whenever I close my eyes, he is there.
“As he would always say: ‘Life is what you make it, so take it and make it beautiful.’ And he did.
“It was easy to love Bobby because he loved me first.
“Farewell my Love, I'll see you in my dreams.”
Born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 18th, 1948, he said he learned to play Hammond organ by "peering over Booker T Jones's shoulder at Stax studios. The first white artist signed Stax, Whitlock played on recordings by Sam & Dave and Booker T. & the M.G.’s.
In his 2010 autobiography, Bobby Whitlock: A Rock 'n' Roll Autobiography, he wrote that Memphis in the 1960s was "a great time and town for music, especially soul music. It was real rhythm and blues. Albert King R&B, that's what I'm talking about. It was loose and all about music everywhere that you turned."
In the late '60s, Whitlock left Memphis after meeting the husband-and-wife team of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, who asked him to join their soul-revue band, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends.
Some of those "Friends" included Eric Clapton and George Harrison, which led to Whitlock playing on Harrison's first post-Beatles album, All Things Must Pass. And it was those sessions that led Whitlock and Clapton to form Derek and the Dominos along with Carl Radle (1980) and Jim Gordon (2023). Clapton, the last surviving member of the band, reacted to Whitlock's death, calling him a "dear friend" and offering "sincere condolences to [his] wife CoCo and his family on this sad day."
For their one and only studio album, 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Whitlock wrote or co-wrote seven of the album's 14 songs including “Tell the Truth,” and “Bell Bottom Blues,” which he didn't receive credit for until 2015.
Whitlock told us at the time that he used the belated royalty check to buy a new Volvo XC90 SUV for CoCo joking that they call it the "Bell Bottom Blues Mobile."
Another iconic album Whitlock played on during that period was The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street.
Following Derek and the Dominos, Whitlock recorded 14 albums, many with CoCo.
In 2024, Whitlock was inducted into Memphis’ Beale Street Walk of Fame in 2024. He marked the honor by writing a new song, "Walking on Beale Street."
A painter in his spare time, Whitlock, in addition to CoCo, leaves behind three children and a sister.