Stax Records signed Whitlock as the first white artist to join singers like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave at the label.

With Eric Clapton, he wrote “Bell Bottom Blues” and built one of the greatest — if most short-lived — supergroups of the 1970s.

Rock singer-songwriter Bobby Whitlock, who performed alongside Eric Clapton in Derek and the Dominos, has died at the age of 77.