Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is the only studio album by the Anglo-American blues rock band Derek and the Dominos. Released in November 1970, the double album is best known for its title track, “Layla”, and is often regarded as Eric Clapton’s greatest musical achievement. The other band members were Bobby Whitlock on keyboards and vocals, Jim Gordon on drums, Carl Radle on bass, and special guest performer Duane Allman on lead and slide guitar on 11 of the 14 songs. In 2000, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2003, television network VH1 named Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs the 89th-greatest album of all time, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 117 on its list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. Critic Robert Christgau ranked Layla the third greatest album of the 1970s. In 2012, the Super Deluxe Edition of the record won a Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album. (More from Wikipedia)
Like Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos only released one studio album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970), though it was a double album. A few days into the sessions for the album, Eric Clapton first heard Duane Allman play with the Allman Brothers Band at an outdoor concert in Miami. Eric Clapton and Duane Allman had an all-night jam session soon after that; Allman was invited to join Derek and the Dominos as a fifth member, but he declined in order to remain loyal to his band. However, Duane Allman played slide guitar on all but 3 of the 14 songs on the album. My brother Tom Winfree is a huge Duane fan; he says that most people are hearing Duane Allman on this album when they think they are hearing Eric Clapton – those opening notes on “Layla”, for instance, are from Duane. As reported in Wikipedia: “Many critics would later notice that [Eric] Clapton played best when in a band composed of dual guitars; working with another guitarist kept him from getting ‘sloppy and lazy and this was undeniably the case with Duane Allman’.”
The Derek and the Dominos album includes of course their massive hit “Layla”, but the album was not a big seller right away – in fact, Layla and Other Love Songs didn’t make the record charts in England until 2011 (for one week).
As the years have gone by, appreciation of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs – which wasn’t even a critical favorite at the time – has grown, and the album makes several best-album lists. VH1 named it #89, and Rolling Stone has it at #115.
(May 2014)
