He Cofounded the Band That Brought You 'Layla'

Bobby Whitlock, a US singer-songwriter who cofounded Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton in 1970, has died of cancer. Whitlock passed away Sunday morning surrounded by his family in Texas, said manager Carol Kaye, per CBS News. He was 77. In a statement, his wife, Coco Carmel Whitlock, said he went "from abject poverty in the south to heights unimagined." "As he would always say: 'Life is what you make it, so take it and make it beautiful.' And he did," she added. Whitlock was a keyboardist and vocalist for Derek and the Dominos, which was first to release "Layla," a rock hit written by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon.

Apart from that song, Clapton and Whitlock cowrote the majority of songs on the band's Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs album. It was the band's only full-length release. Whitlock, who also played on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, went on to release a series of solo albums before turning to painting in his later years, per Variety. "My business is to try to conduct myself as a decent person and a gentleman as much as I can," he said in an interview last year. In his own statement, Clapton called Whitlock "a dear friend" and offered "sincere condolences to Bobby's wife CoCo and his family on this sad day."