Derek and the Dominos Co-Founder Bobby Whitlock, Dead at 77

Keyboardist Bobby Whitlock died August 10, after a brief illness. 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?” his wife and collaborator Coco Carmel said in a statement to CBS News . Whitlock played keys for Eric Clapton and George Harrison, and co-founded Derek and the Dominos with Clapton in 1970.

Whitlock was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1948. He came up in the Memphis music scene, learning the organ from Booker T. He became the first white artist signed to Stax Records, according to Rolling Stone . In 1970, Whitlock, Eric Clapton Duane Allman, Carl Radle, and Jim Gordon formed Derek and the Dominos. Whitlock co-wrote half the songs on the band’s Layla and Oth