Bobby Whitlock's ups and downs with Delaney & Bonnie

Rock/soul revue's instability, substance abuse led to group's downfall
By Peter Lindblad

Bobby Whitlock is doing jewelry design
these days, along with music and other
artistic endeavors

Almost from the very start, the soul/rock revue Delaney & Bonnie and Friends was a band of musical vagabonds, the lineup always in a state of flux.

When Bobby Whitlock, reared at Stax Records, joined up in the late 1960s, however, he found it to be a close-knit assemblage of talented artists, even going so far as to call it a "family." They were kindred spirits, according to Whitlock, passionate and knowledgeable about Southern music and making themselves right at home in the nurturing environment of Stax.

At the same time, there was constant turnover, and Whitlock sympathized with Delaney Bramlett, knowing that the transience vexed him.

"It's frustrating to be the leader of it, because it's always changing," said Whitlock, the keyboardist/guitarist who would go on to help form Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton and play on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album. "If everyone is always going, and everyone is always changing and every situation always changes. Everyone wants to better themselves, and the doors of opportunity are always open for everyone to get themselves on a higher plateau."

Whitlock eventually did likewise, but he remained with Delaney & Bonnie from 1968 to 1970, playing keyboards and lending vocals to 1969's Home and Accept No Substitute albums. Members at the time included a horn section consisting of Bobby Keys and Jim Price, bassist Carl Radle and drummers Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon, with guitar god Eric Clapton becoming lead guitarist midway through the summer of 1969 on a U.S. tour.

At first, everything ran like clockwork. Then, the group began to suffer from a chemical imbalance. "That carried on until D&A got involved. I call it 'drugs and alcohol,'" said Whitlock. "That kindred spirit seemed to fall to the wayside. In the beginning, everyone could relate to each other."

Bobby Whitlock performing with
his wife, CoCo Carmel.

Nowadays, Whitlock has a family with wife Coco Carmel, the two forming a husband-and-wife musical duo. He said she does everything well, and added that " ... she sees the big picture. She saw the big picture in me before I did." Coming into focus currently is Whitlock's art work, including his jewelry design. Whitlock is currently auctioning a piece called the "Mountain Ring" and preparing to see his works to the public. Information regarding the ring can be found here: http://backstageauctions.blogspot.com/2014/10/auction-for-bobby-whitlocks-mountain.html

Whitlock works in a variety of mediums these days, including root art, wood carving and painting. As a musician, versatility has always been his calling card, and he was called on to do something with Delaney & Bonnie that was a bit out of his comfort zone.

"Yeah, I was surprised. I didn't know I was going to be singing chick parts number one," said Whitlock. "It all worked out. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open, because I was surrounded by great people, but I had always been surrounded by great people, always."

That was the case at Stax, a place that had been his home, where he cut his teeth with Sam & Dave and Booker T. & the MGs. "When I got with Delaney & Bonnie, I left my career at Stax to be with them," said Whitlock, who had become a part of a disciplined unit that prized tightness and efficiency. "It was like being with James Brown. It was Delaney's way or no way at all."

Bobby Whitlock at the piano, with Eric Clapton on the guitar.

Delaney & Bonnie excelled at vocal harmonies, and Whitlock sang those "chick parts" with zeal. "As it turned out, it was a good thing that for me, because singing those second-part harmonies, that's what we did with the Dominos."

His background in gospel music made it easy for him to assimilate into the vocal harmony boot camps of Sam & Dave and Delaney & Bonnie, and what Delaney & Bonnie did at first, as an acoustic duo, influences what Whitlock and Carmel do today. Still, Whitlock feels the Delaney & Bonnie and Friends "couldn't be topped" as far as vocal harmonies go.

And while the ever-evolving lineup caused consternation among those who stuck it out for a while, Whitlock is quick to say that "nobody ever got fired from Delaney & Bonnie. Everybody left. It was like a revolving door, just coming in and going out." Eventually, Whitlock went out that door as well, going off to work on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album and then forming Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton. His days with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, however, were important to his development as an artist.

(We'll have more from Bobby Whitlock on his work on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album and his days with Derek and the Dominos coming soon)

Bobby Whitlock on his 'sacred art,' his Stax education and Delaney and Bonnie

Legendary musician talks about his formative years as a musician
By Peter Lindblad

Bobby Whitlock learned to play the Hammond organ
from Booker T. at Stax Records

(In the second part of our look at the art and career of Bobby Whitlock, we review his early days at Stax Records and his move to Delaney and Bonnie. Part 3 will discuss the downfall of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends and his participation in George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and the creation of Derek and the Dominos)

To Bobby Whitlock, art is art. It doesn't matter if he's making music or doing something else – like making jewelry, his more recent pursuit – the creative process is the same.

"There's no difference in designing a piece of jewelry, writing songs, carving a piece of wood or anything ... painting pictures, no, it's all the same and really ... as a songwriter, I'm just the vessel or the instrument," explained Whitlock, a founding member of Derek and the Dominos. "And the same holds true in jewelry design, wood, root art ... any of the stuff that I do, and it's that way for any artist. They're the tool, the instrument."

Whitlock's humility is sincere. Having played with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends at the height of their popularity, and then performing keyboards on George Harrison's legendary All Things Must Pass album, before teaming with Eric Clapton in the short-lived super group Derek and the Dominoes, Whitlock has every reason in the world to boast.

Bobby Whitlock with his
second solo album 'Raw Velvet'

He's had an incredible career in music, including helping out on records by Dr. John, the Rolling Stones, Clapton and John Lennon, playing with Booker T. & The MGs and Sam & Dave, and issuing a series of well-received solo albums. While with Derek and the Dominos, Whitlock wrote classics such as "Anyday" and "Tell The Truth." More recently, Whitlock has been performing with his wife, CoCo Carmel, also a supremely talented musician.

At home, however, he's just Bobby, quietly creating art out of whatever's available, including the cedar stumps and logs he's collected over the years from a river area near his home in Austin, Texas. To him, what he does is "sacred art." It's natural and organic, like his root art, and it has very little to do with the modern world.

Bobby Whitlock's "The Mountain Ring"

Hearing that term, "sacred art," for the first time, Whitlock didn't know what it meant. He does now, and it means the world to him. It's a good description for his jewelry creations, one of which is the "Mountain Ring," currently up for auction. Here's all the information (http://www.filedropper.com/bw-mountain-ring-epk Download Bobby Whitlock's Official Press Kit Today and bid via email to WhitlockMountain@Gmail.com) for the public sale of the "Mountain Ring." For auction rules, see http://backstageauctions.blogspot.com/2014/10/auction-for-bobby-whitlocks-mountain.html

"It comes from sacred place," said Whitlock. "I didn't sit around with a computer and an imaging machine come up with it. Nobody did. It's not involved. As a matter of fact, I cut out some people in my experience who wanted me to do that. They wanted me to start using computerized imagery, and I'm like, 'No, no, no man ... hell no. That's like using a rhyme book (laughs)." In his Southern drawl, Whitlock added, "That ain't happening man."

His mentors at Stax Records certainly would not approve of that sort of thing either. As a teen growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, in the mid-to-late 1960s, Whitlock spent a lot of time hanging around Stax artists, including Sam & Dave, Booker T. and the MGs, the Staples Singers and Albert King. It was where he received a priceless education in soul music, having learned to play the Hammond organ watching Booker T. Eventually, Whitlock became the first white artist signed to Stax's Hip label, doing rock 'n' roll and R&B.

"What I brought with me from that time was simplicity," said Whitlock. King's guitar playing "emobodied" that, Whitlock added. So did Steve Cropper and his playing, as Whitlock cited Cropper's solo on "Green Onions" as a prime example.

"He may not be Eric Clapton in the fluid department, but there ain't but one Eric Clapton," said Whitlock. "For Eric, it's all in the wrist. Well, you've gotta have that wrist (laughs)."

A lot of people wish they could play like Clapton, including Whitlock, himself a guitarist. "But then it wouldn't be special if everybody played like him," Whitlock said.

There were plenty of special artists at Stax, including the songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

"I met them when they were a songwriting team at Stax," said Whitlock. "So I watched them work. I watched songs come into expression in one room and taken into the studio room, the artists' auditorium – Stax was an old movie theater ... taking it to the auditorium and recording it on a four-track machine upstairs."

Observing Cropper work his magic in the studio and the control booth, expertly and skillfully taking a recording from a 2-track to cutting acetates and incorporating fades, Whitlock was exposed to a kind of artistry that others never witnessed.

Bobby Whitlock played
keyboards on two 1969
Delaney and Bonnie albums

Raised on gospel and Southern music, Whitlock said, "I have a real colorful background," one that offers him incredible inspiration. "And my inspiration is from everything around me," he added, "and I don't know anything about things that I don't know."

So the subjects of Whitlock's songs, as well as those of his art, come straight from his own experiences.

"It's all brand new," said Whitlock. "Every moment is a learning experience."

And he's tried to soak it all in, as he said, "I sure am enjoying the ride." Part of his secret, he says, is "surrounding myself with people who are better at doing what they do than I am at what I do."

Some of those people were Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn and Don Nix, who were all set to produce a Whitlock solo album for the Stax subsidiary Hip, when Whitlock left to join the husband-and-wife team of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett in a soul revue project they were putting together. Whitlock played keyboards and sang vocals on two 1969 Delaney and Bonnie albums, Home and Accept No Substitute.

In the beginning, Whitlock compared the situation to a family. "We were all really close," and he says that "carried on until 'D&A' got involved." And by D&A, Whitlock means "drugs and alcohol." Whitlock said everyone could relate to one another and "nobody told anyone what to do." Whitlock said it was similar to "birds flying." That situation wouldn't last, though.