Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the lone studio album Derek and the Dominos ever made, arrived as a two-record set on 9 November 1970, through Polydor and Atco, and it's the sound of Eric Clapton pouring everything he had into four sides of slow-burning, blues-soaked rock. Tom Dowd produced, and he captures a band that plays like it's been locked in a room together for weeks.

The English-American lineup is a tight one: Clapton on guitar and lead vocals, Bobby Whitlock on vocals and keyboards, Carl Radle on bass and Jim Gordon on drums. And then there's Duane Allman, whose lead and slide playing shows up on 11 of the album's 14 tracks and makes the whole thing into a duel between two guitarists pushing each other higher. The title track is the big one, a howling, desperate rocker, and plenty of people rate it as Clapton's finest hour. "Bell Bottom Blues" aches, "Keep On Growing" rolls, "Key to the Highway" stretches out into a loose, easy jam, and "Little Wing" soars.

It flopped at first. It didn't chart in Britain at all and only got to number 16 in America, and critics weren't impressed. But it kept coming back, returning to the US chart in 1972, 1974 and 1977, going gold, and finally showing up on the UK chart in 2011 at number 68. It went into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000, and a Super Deluxe Edition won the Grammy for Best Surround Sound Album in 2012.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.