Bobby Whitlock, Derek and the Dominos Co-Founder, Dies at 77 — Rock World Mourns a Legend.

Bobby Whitlock, Derek and the Dominos Co-Founder and Session Player for George Harrison and Others, Dies at 77.

Bobby Whitlock, the keyboardist and singer who helped start Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton, passed away Sunday at 77. He was also a key player on George Harrison’s landmark triple album, All Things Must Pass. Manager Carol Kaye told Variety that Whitlock died Sunday morning at 1:20 a.m. after a short fight with cancer.

Bobby Whitlock was born in Memphis and signed to Stax Records while still a teenager. He backed legends like Booker T. and the MG’s and Sam & Dave before joining Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. On tours with that band, he formed a deep musical friendship with Clapton that would eventually lead to the Dominos.

He soon joined the sessions for “All Things Must Pass,” and though three keyboardists are on that landmark record, it’s never been clear who played what. Whitlock is known for the piano on “Beware of Darkness” — the very song that millions are now hearing as the haunting intro for the surprise horror hit “Weapons.”

Derek and the Dominos became a one-album legend, yet that single record—1971’s double “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs”—is ranked among rock’s finest. Bobby Whitlock co-wrote seven songs, including the enduring “Bell Bottom Blues” and the combustible “Tell the Truth.”

When the Dominos came apart, Whitlock kept moving. His first solo LP, simply titled “Bobby Whitlock,” hit in 1972 and reunited nearly the entire group, although the members never stacked their talents in the same room. The follow-up records of the 1970s cemented his place as a songwriter and a player who never really left the scene.

He popped up without credit on the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street and insisted he got shorted on a co-writer credit for “I Just Want to See His Face.”

As a guest player, he added himself to the opening tracks of Clapton’s and Doris Troy’s self-titled albums, Dr. John’s The Sun, Moon & Herbs, and the 1972 record Down the Road from Stephen Stills and Manassas.

According to Variety, In the early 2000s, he hit the small club circuit with his wife, CoCo Carmel Whitlock, who once married Delaney Bramlett. They stripped the “Layla” tunes down to acoustic duets. “The songs on that album are as new today as they were then,” he told the Austin Chronicle in 2006. “They just never had anyone perform them that had anything to do with them.” Those gigs led to their 2003 live record, Other Assorted Love Songs.

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After a brief stopover in Tennessee—“I was a little too soulful for Nashville,” he chuckled—Bobby Whitlock rolled into Austin in 2006. “It feels like Memphis in 1965, back when it was all about the music and everyone was in everyone else’s corner. Now I can’t picture calling anywhere else home.”

In 2021, Whitlock and his wife left Austin for a stretch in the tiny town of Ozona, Texas, a change he logged on his Facebook page.

In 2010 he gave the world his autobiography, complete with a foreword by Clapton. In 2024 he stepped into the Memphis Hall of Fame with a spot on the Beale Street Walk of Fame.

Last year, while chatting with Everything Knoxville after receiving his Memphis honor, Whitlock shared, “At one point, I really doubted anyone still cared. Sure, they gave a nod to my parts on classics like ‘Layla’ and ‘All Things Must Pass’—and the list goes on.

My job has always been to walk through the world like a decent person and a gentleman, and to keep things steady. When I do stir the pot, I try to make waves that people will remember. Then, out of nowhere, everything flipped, and I definitely wasn’t after it.”

“I knew what I brought to the table, and that was enough for me. Didn’t matter if anyone else noticed the things I’ve made. My life feels full. I pick up my brush every day and do the work I love. It just flows out of me because that’s who I really am. I wake up every day grateful; every step I take feels like a gift.”

Over the past few years, painting became his passion, and his pieces began hanging in local galleries for others to enjoy.

He leaves behind his wife, three children—Ashley Brown, Beau Whitlock, and Tim Whitlock Kelly—and his sister, Debbie Wade.