Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs Discogs

[Diante Scharsch]

Initiallyregarded as a critical and commercial disappointment, it failed to chart in Britain and peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Top LPs chart in the United States. It returned to the US albums chart again in 1972, 1974 and 1977, and has since been certified Gold by the RIAA. The album finally debuted on the UK Albums Chart in 2011, peaking at number 68. 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. In the same year, Rolling Stone ranked it number 117 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[1] It was ranked at number 226 on the 2020 reboot of the list.[2] It was voted number 287 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).[3] In 2012, the Super Deluxe Edition of Layla won a Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album.

Derek and the Dominos grew out of Eric Clapton's frustration with the hype associated with his previous bands, the supergroups Cream and Blind Faith. Following the latter's dissolution, he joined Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, whom he had come to know while they were the opening act on Blind Faith's US tour in the summer of 1969. After that band also split up, a Friends alumnus, Bobby Whitlock, joined up with Clapton in Surrey, England.[4] From April 1970, the two spent weeks writing a number of songs "just to have something to play", as Whitlock put it. These songs would later make up the bulk of the material on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.[citation needed]

Having toured with Joe Cocker straight after leaving Delaney & Bonnie, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon reunited with Clapton and Whitlock in England. Clapton attempted to avoid the limelight under cover of the anonymous "Derek and the Dominos", with whom he played a tour of small clubs in Britain during the first three weeks of August. The group's name had reportedly resulted from a gaffe made by the announcer at their first concert, who mispronounced the band's provisional name, "Eric & The Dynamos". In fact, Clapton chose "Derek and the Dominos" because he did not want his name and celebrity to get in the way of maintaining a "band" image. When the tour was over, they headed for Criteria Studios in Miami to record an album.

Veteran producer Tom Dowd was at Criteria working on the Allman Brothers Band's second album, Idlewild South, when the studio received a phone call that Clapton was bringing the Dominos to Miami to record. Upon hearing this, guitarist Duane Allman indicated that he would love to drop by and watch, if Clapton approved.

The majority of the songs on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs were products of Clapton and Whitlock's collaboration, which produced six of the nine originals on the recording, with five covers making up the balance. Clapton used a diminutive 5-watt tweed Fender Champ during the sessions,[11] which has grown to legend since.

Clapton and Whitlock co-wrote "I Looked Away", "Keep on Growing", "Anyday", "Bell Bottom Blues", "Tell the Truth" and "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" Whitlock also contributed "Thorn Tree in the Garden", while Clapton brought "I Am Yours" (from a poem by Nizami) and "Layla" (with a coda credited to Jim Gordon).

"Tell the Truth" had been initially recorded with an upbeat tempo in June 1970 with producer Phil Spector. It was issued as a single, with "Roll It Over" on the B-side. However, as Whitlock recalls, Spector's Wall of Sound approach did not fit the band's style, and they had the single withdrawn.[12] On 28 August, with Allman contributing slide,[13] the song was recorded as a long and slow instrumental jam. The version with vocals released on Layla captures the jam's slower pace. Both vocal versions were later included on the 1972 compilation The History of Eric Clapton.

The album's five covers included the blues standards "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Jimmy Cox), "Key to the Highway" (Charles Segar, Willie Broonzy), and "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (Billy Myles), a version of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing", and an up-tempo take on Chuck Willis's doo-wop ballad "It's Too Late".

According to Dowd, the recording of "Key to the Highway" was unplanned, triggered by the band hearing Sam Samudio performing the song for his album Sam, Hard and Heavy in another room at the studio. As the Dominos spontaneously started playing it themselves, Dowd told the engineers to roll tape, resulting in the tune's telltale fade-in. Bobby Whitlock's version of the story is that the tape was rolling non-stop for the entire session, but that Dowd had taken a lavatory break leaving the faders on the mixer down. As the jam began, he came running back into the control room, still pulling up his trousers and yelling, "Push up the faders!"[14][15]

The album's front cover is credited as "Cover painting by Frandsen-De Schomberg with thanks to his son, Emile, for the abuse of his house". Bobby Whitlock revealed in an interview that while they were staying at Emile Frandsen's house in France in August 1970, he took them to his father's studio just after they had made a mess by having an egg fight. It was there that they saw "La Fille au Bouquet" (Girl with bouquet), the painting by mile-Thodore Frandsen de Shomberg which became the cover of Layla.[16] Eric Clapton immediately spotted a likeness between the blonde-haired woman it depicted and Pattie Boyd. Clapton also insisted that the image be used unadorned on the ''Layla'' sleeve, with no text added to give either the band's name or the title of the album.[17]

Clapton later gave the painting to George Harrison, who subsequently gave the painting to Boyd.[19][20] Boyd put the painting up for sale at auction at Christie's in February 2024 alongside letters and notes from both Clapton and Harrison, with an estimate of 40-60,000. After a prolonged bidding battle, the painting was sold for 1,976,000.[21]

Atco Records issued Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs in November 1970 in the United States,[22] with a UK release following in December, on Polydor.[17] The album failed to chart in the United Kingdom,[23] while in the US, it peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Top LPs chart.[24] Despite this achievement, Layla was viewed as a commercial failure, according to authors Harry Shapiro[17] and Jan Reid.[25] Dowd later rued the difficulty of getting airplay for the songs on US radio,[26] while Shapiro attributes its lack of success in Britain to minimal promotion by Polydor and what he terms "the unrelenting and monotonous Press litany of a post-Cream withdrawal syndrome".[27] Concerned that the press and the public were unaware of Clapton's involvement, Atco and Polydor distributed badges reading "Derek is Eric".

In a rave review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau applauded the contrast of "the high-keyed precision of [Clapton's] guitar" with "the relaxed rocking of Allman/Whitlock/Radle/Gordon". He wrote in conclusion that, "even though this one has the look of a greedy, lazy, slapdash studio session, I think it may be Eric Clapton's most consistent recording ... one of those rare instances when musicians join together for profit and a lark and come up with a mature and original sound." Christgau rewarded the album with a rare A+ grade.[32] In a review for the album's 1972 reissue, Ed Naha of Circus called Layla an "amazing collection of Clapton tumblers" and stated, "Clapton shines once again as the high priest of rock guitar."[33]

The band appeared on The Johnny Cash Show, which became their only television appearance. Filmed at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee, and broadcast on 6 January 1971, the band performed "It's Too Late" and then joined Cash and Carl Perkins for the Perkins' classic, "Matchbox".[48]

Clapton continued to play the song "Layla" live, as at Live Aid (in Philadelphia) in 1985.[49] In 2006, Clapton and J.J. Cale recorded The Road to Escondido, on which Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks played guitar. Following this, Clapton went on tour with Trucks as part of his band. Clapton explained later that playing with Trucks made him feel like he was in Derek and the Dominos again. As the tour progressed the set changed, with the first half of the show consisting entirely of songs from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and culminating in "Layla".[50]

The first CD release (manufactured in 1983 in Japan) is a two-CD version. Because this album is more than 77 minutes it did not fit onto early CDs, which had a maximum play time of approximately 74 and a half minutes. The first CD was full of tape hiss, since it was made from a tape copy many generations removed from the original 1970 stereo master. This mastering's negative reception motivated at least one attempt to remaster the CD during the 1980s.[citation needed] Improvements, however, were not very significant because the original 1970 stereo master tapes could not be found at the time.

To mark the album's twentieth anniversary in 1990, an extended version of the album was released as a deluxe three-CD set, with extensive liner notes titled The Layla Sessions: 20th Anniversary Edition. The first disc has the same tracks as the original LP, remixed in stereo from the 16-track analog source tapes and digitally remastered. This 1990 remix, issued by Polydor, has also been released as a single CD apart from the box set. The remix has some significant changes including center placement of the bass, which in the original mix was often mixed into either the left or right channel. The other two discs of The Layla Sessions include a number of jam sessions, including the historic jam from the night that Clapton and Allman met. Also included were out-takes of some of the songs, and the previously unreleased tracks "Mean Old World", "It Hurts Me Too", and "Tender Love".

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