Bobby Whitlock, Derek and the Dominos founder, dead at 77

Bobby Whitlock, the keyboardist, singer-songwriter and co-founder of the blues-rock group Derek and the Dominos, has died. He was 77.

In a statement, his manager, Carole Kaye, said, “With profound sadness, the family of Bobby Whitlock announces his passing at 1:20 a.m. on Aug. 10 after a brief illness. He passed in his home in Texas, surrounded by family.”

Although Derek and the Dominos is perhaps best known for launching singer and guitarist Eric Clapton into solo superstardom, Whitlock was a key contributor to the group’s 1970 debut “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” and an influential session musician and singer-songwriter in his own right.

Whitlock was born March 18, 1948, into a poverty-stricken early life in Millington, Tenn., a suburb of Memphis. His keyboard and piano skills, formed around Southern church traditions, led him to eavesdropping on sessions at Stax Records’ studios, which took notice of his uncommonly soulful musicianship. Stax Records signed him to its new pop-focused imprint HIP — he was the first white artist to join singers like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave at the label group.

His major breakthrough came when he was asked to join Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, an acclaimed rock-soul combo whose collaborators included generationally important artists like Duane and Gregg Allman, Leon Russell, George Harrison and Clapton.

Delaney & Bonnie and Friends took Whitlock on tour with Clapton’s supergroup, Blind Faith, and Clapton used much of that band’s lineup to record his 1970 solo debut. He later asked Whitlock to join him in a new combo (with bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon), assembled to back Harrison on “All Things Must Pass,” which became Derek and the Dominos.

“The empathy amongst all the musicians outcropped most noticeably in Bobby Whitlock, in whom Eric found an accomplished and sympathetic songwriting partner and back-up vocalist,” Clapton biographer Harry Shapiro wrote in “Eric Clapton: Lost in the Blues.”

On “Layla,” the group’s sole studio LP, Whitlock wrote or co-wrote half of the album’s songs, including “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Tell the Truth.” A U.S. tour featured opener Elton John, who wrote in his autobiography that, among the Dominos, “it was their keyboard player Bobby Whitlock that I watched like a hawk. He was from Memphis, learned his craft hanging around Stax Studios and played with that soulful, deep Southern gospel feel.”

While the band’s drug use and personal tensions eventually led to a split, Whitlock released his self-titled solo debut in 1972 and “Raw Velvet,” a follow-up that same year. As a session musician, he played on the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main St.” and Dr. John’s “The Sun, Moon & Herbs.”

He continued releasing solo material through the ’70s, returning in the ’90s and often collaborating with his wife and musical partner CoCo Carmel.

“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,” Carmel said in a statement to The Times. “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. As he would always say: ‘Life is what you make it, so take it and make it beautiful.’ And he did.”

Whitlock is survived by his wife and children Ashley Faye Brown, Beau Elijah Whitlock and Tim Whitlock Kelly.