There are a lot of good, live country music albums. But are there any out there that could possibly top Johnny Cash's "At Folsom Prison" from his January 13, 1968, show at California's Folsom State Prison?
If there are, I'd like to know about them.
Columbia Records didn't see fit to invest much money into the project, which was a groundbreaking effort at the time. But it turned into a hit, reaching the top of the country chart and the top 15 on the national album chart. All these years later, it's gone triple platinum.
It was an album that turned Cash's career around. With June Carter, Carl Perkins and the Statler Brothers along to back him up -- and with that Johnny Cash bite -- it was hard to go wrong with this one.
When you read Bobby Whitlock's autobiography, he talks about some very good times that were shared when he was a member of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett's groundbreaking band in the late 1960s. At the same time, it almost seems like a bit of fate that his association with Delaney & Bonnie would end, and a grand new association would grow out of it.
That association was with Eric Clapton. With Clapton on guitar, Whitlock on keyboards and gutsy backing vocals (and sharing songwriting credits with Clapton on a number of tunes), Carl Radle on steady bass, and Jim Gordon on drums, they would play with George Harrison on the "quiet Beatle's" historic solo album "All Things Must Pass."
That was all seemingly a warmup to Clapton, Whitlock, Radle and Gordon coming out with Derek and The Dominos' landmark album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" around the same time -- along with a monster slide guitarist named Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers Band, which helped add to the legend of this one album.
Whitlock himself talks about how crucial Allman was to the success of the album, and how much of a natural leader Allman was.
It makes the mind wonder what could have been had Derek and The Dominos lasted beyond one studio release. But history can't be rewritten. It plays out the way it is meant to play out.
Whitlock talks about Clapton
walking right over to the oil painting, "La Fille au Bouquet," which
looked so much like Pattie Boyd and would become the cover art for the
album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs." He talks about how
millions of people would come to know that painting as "Layla."
Of course, there are the lyrics to the song "Layla," telling the painful feelings behind one of the most famous true love stories in rock music history.
It ends with some of the most memorable lines out of the whole song, which has become a classic rock anthem.
"Let's make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane.
Please don't say we'll never find a way
And tell me all my love's in vain."
But the album was more than that one song. It would become known as -- even in Clapton's own words -- the greatest thing he had ever done, and he wondered out loud to Whitlock how he could top it.
Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon, Carl Radle
It was Clapton and Allman trading fiery licks. It was Radle and Gordon laying down a rock-solid beat for everyone to follow. It was Whitlock playing some righteous keyboards and matching Clapton's vocals perfectly with some forever-memorable soulful singing that came straight from the gut.
And it all ended so beautifully with a Whitlock song that seems to mean the most to him out of anything Whitlock's ever written: "Thorn Tree in The Garden," a song about a dog of Whitlock's that went missing.
There are all kinds of stories in Whitlock's autobiography about those days when he and his bandmates put together an album of songs that would rock the world for decades to come -- from appearing on The Johnny Cash Show to seeing the group come to a sad and sudden end.
It all came down to just "letting it flow."
MONDAY: The introduction, music through Delaney & Bonnie and Friends TODAY: Moving on to Derek and The Dominos with "Layla" WEDNESDAY: The email interview with Bobby Whitlock THURSDAY: Bobby Whitlock, post-Dominos FRIDAY: Bobby Whitlock, "The Time Is Now"
