Derek & the Dominos (including Duane Allman) - Curtis Hixon Hall, Tampa, FL, 12-1-1970

I want to kick off the month of April 2025 with a special album posting. This album is the one and only concert recording of Derek and the Dominos with Duane Allman taking part. This has been bootlegged many times. But I'm proud to say this version has noticeably better sound quality than any previous version!

The classic album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" was by the band Derek and the Dominos, with Eric Clapton the main star. However, one thing that made that album special was that Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band played his distinctive slide guitar all through the album. That kind of made him one of the Dominos, but only partially because he already had a full time job with the Allman Brothers Band, and they were touring constantly. It turned out during the couple of months that Derek and the Dominos went on tour, in late 1970, Duane Allman only took part in two concerts: this one, in Tampa, Florida, and one the next day in Syracuse, New York. 

Only this one of the two got recorded, and only an average sounding audience bootleg. But due to the unique presence of Allman playing guitar for the entire show, this is probably the most traded Derek and the Dominos bootleg, despite the sound quality issue. Personally, I had this in my music collection for years, but I almost never listened to it, due to the sound. But I noticed last week that a person named Goody posted a new version that adjusted the speed and the pitch. So I downloaded that. Then I tried to see what I could do to improve upon it. 

I used two tricks that I often use. First, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. There were some places in particular where the vocals were extra quiet. For instance, I went through parts of "Got to Get Better in a Little While" line by line. Probably, Clapton had his head too far from the microphone at times. I also got rid of most vocals that weren't actually by the band members. For example, in the middle of "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," a sad blues song, a woman in the audience could be heard laughing loudly for a few seconds. I didn't get rid of all of that, but I got most of it. I made a lot of other little changes like that.

Then I used the MVSEP audio editing program to get rid of most of the crowd noise, except at the very beginnings and ends of songs. Since this is an audience boot, there was a low level of crowd noise all through the songs. Sometimes, one could even hear snippets of conversation. I got rid of most of that.

I also cut down on the dead air between songs. There was quite a bit, for instance, guitar tuning. That probably shortened the album by a couple of minutes.

However, my audio editing skills are quite limited. So I then handed the files off to my musical associate MZ. Here's what he said he did to the file: "anomalies repaired, EQ rationalised, compressed (loud parts lowered, quiet parts made louder), etc... Numerous details fixed." When I listened to the music after he sent it back to me, I noticed a difference. 

Mind you, one can only do so much with the source material. This is still an audience boot, not a soundboard or FM boot. But if you compare this with previous versions, I'm confident you'll notice that this sounds better. Let's hope the powers that be who own the rights to this material do a professional job and officially release it, since this is a truly historic concert. There's so much that can be done these days due to improving audio editing technology.

Note that I previously included two songs from this concert, "Layla" and "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," on a Derek and Dominos live compilation album called "Live and Rare." I have now removed those, since they're here, and with better sound. Here's the link if you want to get the revised version:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/derek-dominos-live-and-rare-1970.html

Also note that in recent days I updated most of the Derek and the Dominos album covers with better versions, using the Krea AI program. They were generally pretty rough images due to the lack of many good photos of the band.

Finally, a big thanks to both Goody and MZ!

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Layla (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Key to the Highway (Derek & the Dominos)
05 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Let It Rain - Drum Solo - Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/68ZtMkmG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/C1iKYwbanNr5xa6/file

There are two parts to the cover art. The top part is a photograph of a genuine ticket from this historic concert. (That's Clapton on the left, Allman on the right, and bassist Carl Radle in the middle background.) I figured it contained all the important information needed, so I didn't add any text to the cover. The bottom is a photograph from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, and was quite dark. I colorized it using the Kolorize program. I also lightened it some, and used the Krea AI program to improve the quality a bit.

Derek & the Dominos - Marquee Club, London, Britain, 8-11-1970

I'm a very big fan of live Derek and the Dominos music. I think Eric Clapton was at his career peak, both as a performer and a songwriter, plus the band had special chemistry. Unfortunately, the band wasn't in existence for long, and there aren't a lot of recordings with excellent sound quality. The best of the best has to be the Fillmore shows, which have been released in part on official albums and have been posted in full on this blog. Aside from that, it's all audience bootlegs, with the sound quality generally ranging from okay to terrible.

So I'm beyond delighted to be posting this bootleg. This recording from the Marquee Club has been a known bootleg for many years. But just last month as I write this (in November 2021), a new version emerged with improved sound quality. Previously, I hadn't considered this good enough to post at this blog, though I did use four songs from it for the "Live and Rare" compilation album I made. But now I'd say not only is it worthy, but this is arguably the best sounding Derek and the Dominos live recording outside of the Fillmore shows.

It's especially nice to have this with improved sound quality, because it's the only quality recording from early in the band's short career, before they recorded the classic "Layla" album. Starting in early August 1970, the band played three weeks of concerts in England. Nobody had heard of "Derek and the Dominos" at that point, and Clapton specifically forbade the use of his name on all promotions of these shows. Clapton later commented, "no one knew who we were, and I loved it. I loved the fact that we were this little quartet, playing in obscure places, sometimes to audiences of no more than fifty or sixty people." (Less than a year earlier, he had played huge arenas as part of Blind Faith, including headlining a concert in London that drew 100,000 people.)

This very concert was apparently recorded as a soundboard, but somehow it got lost or erased, and all that's left is an empty box. But although this is recorded well, it clearly is an audience recording, not a soundboard. 

It has some typical audience bootleg problems, including the fact that only part of the concert was recorded. There was an early show and a late show. "Bad Boy" was the last song of the early show. That would make the early show merely 30 minutes long. Almost certainly there was more before the first song here, but we don't know what that was. Also, the last song, "Don't Know Why," fades out in the middle of a solo. It's highly likely the taper ran out of tape, but the recording fades out to make the ending less jarring. The portion of the late show is only 24 minutes long, which also suggests there's a good chunk that didn't get recorded.

So that's a shame, but hey, we still have 54 minutes of great music here. These August 1970 concerts had significantly different set lists than the concerts done in October through December 1970, after the "Layla" album was recorded. Most of the songs for the "Layla" album weren't ready yet, so the set list relied heavily on Eric Clapton's 1970 solo album, just titled "Eric Clapton." But "Anyday" is from the "Layla" album, yet was almost never played in concert, so this is the only good sounding version of that song done by the band. "Tell the Truth," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Little Wing" would end up on the "Layla" album too. But "Tell the Truth" is done very differently, similar to a fast version made for a single that got withdrawn at the last minute.

As an aside, Jimi Hendrix died on September 18, 1970, while the "Layla" album was being recorded. It has been widely believed that Clapton covered Hendrix's song "Little Wing" in tribute to Hendrix and to mark his passing. So it's interesting to note that he was already doing it in this concert, a month before Hendrix's unexpected death. Before the song, Clapton commented it was "dedicated to a great friend called Jimi."

I started with the improved version that appeared in October 2021. But then I tried to make some additional improvements to it. Using the sound editing programs X-Minus and Spleeter, I boosted the vocals some. I also was able to clear a lot of muck and hiss out of the times between songs. I greatly increased the few spoken comments, allowing one to actually understand most of them. I also cut out about two minutes total of dead air between songs. Finally, once I was done, I handed all the files to musical friend MZ, who improved the equalization on all the songs. 

One curious fact about this band is that it appears Dave Mason of Traffic fame was originally slated to be the fifth member. He took part in early rehearsals, took part in the recording of the withdrawn "Tell the Truth" single mentioned above, and was with the band for all of their first concert, in June 1970. (That was the only show the band would do before August.) But Mason put out his first solo album "Alone Together" in July 1970, and had a lot of success with it. Apparently he decided he couldn't promote himself as a solo artist and be part of Derek and the Dominos, so he quit the band. 

I mention all this because it's been claimed that Mason played with the band one more time, namely, the late show of this very concert. If that's true, I don't find any evidence of it on the recording. But since this is only part of the late show, it's possible his participation didn't get recorded. If he only played a song, or a few, those probably would have been at the end of the show and thus missed here.

This album is 54 minutes long.

UPDATE: On January 26, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The song list is the same. However, I ran all of the songs through the MVSEP "denoise" filter, to get rid of hiss. I think they sound better now.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Roll It Over (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
05 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Anyday (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Bad Boy (Derek & the Dominos)
08 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
10 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
11 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)
12 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
13 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
14 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
15 Country Life (Derek & the Dominos)
16 Don't Know Why (Derek & the Dominos) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QVvomUWA

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/qxV2nyBbMhDrF3p/file

I did find one photo from this exact concert. But it's in black and white and not that great. Still, I'm posting it here for anyone who is curious. 

For the album cover, I chose a photo taken during the band's first concert, at the Lyceum in London in June 14, 1970. This picture is a bit low res. But I actually found several from that show, and one of them had Clapton's head more close up. So I pasted that head in and resized it. I think that helps give the impression the whole thing is less blurry than it is, since his head is a visual focus. 

As I mentioned above, that June concert was the one where Dave Mason was part of the band for the entire thing. Sure enough, he shows up in the photos. But I cropped him out of this one. He's just out of frame on the right side.

Derek & the Dominos - Electric Factory Theatre, Philadelphia, PA, 10-16-1970

Here's another concert from Derek and the Dominos, Eric Clapton's stellar band in 1970.

Note that only two nights at the Fillmore East were the only concerts by this band that were recorded at soundboard quality. After those shows, which I've posted here already, the sound quality of all other shows by the band drops dramatically. But there are still two other shows that I consider worthy of owning and frequently listening to. I've posted one of those (played at the Cincinnati Music Hall) and this is the other one.

Yes, the sound quality is merely good, not excellent. But this is Derek and the Dominos, which in my opinion and the opinion of many others were the pinnacle of Clapton's long career. The sound is definitely listenable, with no major flaws. It's an audience recording, but you never hear any annoying aspects of that, such as people talking over the music. The problem is just that the sound is a bit distant and muffled.

But I took care to use the bootleg with the best sound, based on what die-hard Clapton fans claim. And the performance more than makes up for the minor sound issue, in my opinion. As usual when he played with the Dominos, Clapton was on fire. For instance, many think that this (sixteen-minute long) version of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" was one of the best soloing of his career. Also, there are some interesting rarities played, despite there being only seven songs played in this seventy-minute long show: "Ramblin' On My Mind," "Mean Old World" and "Motherless Children." In particular, this may have been the only time "Motherless Children" was played by the band, yet the arrangement closely matches the version that would appear on Clapton's 1974 album "461 Ocean Boulevard."

Note that I previously posted a "Live and Rare" album of Derek and the Dominos live rarities. But I didn't include any songs from this show in that one, knowing that I'd post it here later.

So basically, if you like this band as much as I do and you want to hear their live recordings, you should have all three albums I've made of the Fillmore East shows first and foremost, plus the Cincinnati concert I've posted, plus this one, plus the "Live and Rare" compilation. The rest has sound quality that's too poor for my tastes, sadly including the Tampa concert with Duane Allman, which is only listenable in parts.

01 Ramblin' On My Mind (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Mean Old World (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Motherless Child (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ThUznfX4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/vb2Hi9UyU5QdFRd/file

For the album cover, I used a publicity photo of the band (plus someone's dog) as the main photo. But I also found a logo of the concert venue, the Electric Factory Theatre, and I added that in as well. Good color photos of the band are few and far between. All I could find was a black and white one. But over a year after first posting this album, I colorized the cover.

Then, in May 2025, I upgraded the image quality with the use of the Krea AI program.

Derek & the Dominos - Cincinnati Music Hall, Cincinnati, OH, 11-26-1970

First things first: I should warn you that the sound quality for this concert is not great. Good, but not great. Basically, when it comes to live Derek and the Dominos, there are the two nights at the Fillmore East, which are excellent soundboards that I posted here recently, and there's everything else. This is probably the best of the rest, the best of the audience bootlegs. But Eric Clapton was at his absolute peak when playing as part of Derek and the Dominos, so I'm willing to put up with less than pristine sound quality.

In addition to the relatively good sound quality, there are a couple of other good reasons why the concert stands out as the best of all live recordings for the band, not counting the Fillmore East shows. The concert took place a month after the Fillmore East shows, and the band got better as they went on. Also, the band played some songs they hardly ever did: "Call It Stormy Monday," a medley of two Chuck Berry songs "Little Queenie" and "Sweet Little Rock and Roller," and "Everyday I Have the Blues." Also, it was rare for them to play "Let It Rain" without a long drum solo in the middle of it.

The show is almost an hour and a half long. Note that, for "Let It Rain" there was a big dropout during the second verse. I tried to fix it by patching in the second verse from a different concert. Unfortunately, the difference is pretty obvious. But I figure that's better than what the patch covered up.

Note that when I originally posted this album, I was under the impression that the band was joined by blues legend B. B. King for the encore. But while "Everyday I Have the Blues" is a song closely associated with King, and the vocals sound a lot like him, I got some comments from people who went to the concert, and claim that King wasn't there. Instead, the vocals on the encore almost certainly belong to Cliff Bennett, the lead singer of Toe Fat, the opening act.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Roll It Over (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Call It Stormy Monday (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Little Queenie - Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)
11 Everyday I Have the Blues (Derek & the Dominos & Toe Fat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NhUfK9No

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/S2KuxfinpAqEgS2/file

I'm glad to say the photo I used for the cover art actually comes from the concert in question. I used a different photo from this same concert for my "Live and Rare" Derek and the Dominos compilation. (By the way, I had one song on that album that's from this concert, so I'm taking it off.)

In May 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-24-1970, Late Show

See my post for the Derek and Dominos concert at the Fillmore East on October 23rd, 1970 late show for a full explanation of what this is about. Note that this is a recording of the late show from the following night, October 24, 1970.

As I said with that previous post, these two late shows are considered the best of all live Derek and the Dominos recordings, due to the flawless sound quality. In my opinion, they are one of the pinnacles of Eric Clapton's career.

The two shows have very similar setlists (though there are some differences). But you should listen to both shows anyway due to the large differences in the performances, especially Clapton's guitar soloing. He played with an energy and passion during his Derek and the Dominos days that he rarely showed in all the years since. If you want even more like this, also check out my post of the October 23rd early show, even though half of it is missing and half of what's there is not of stellar soundboard quality.

I only have a few more things to say specific to this show that I didn't say in the previous post. The song order for the October 23rd late show has generally been accurate for bootlegs, but for the October 24th late show, nearly all bootlegs have messed it up, including having the encore in the middle of the show. This version fixes that.

There have been some persistent problems with some of the performances. One example is the recording of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." A version of this has been officially released, but it missed about half a minute of Clapton's guitar soloing, for some strange reason. The bootlegs come from the same source material as the official recordings, so they also have been missing that same part of that song. I don't know how, but one bootleg has the full, unedited version. I've managed to track that down and I'm using it. So in that instance I'm going with a bootlegged recording for the whole song instead of the official one.

Another problem with bootlegs has been the song "Bottle of Red Wine." This was played on both nights, and the October 23rd version has been officially released. However, it seems that most bootlegs just used the October 23rd version played at a slower speed for the October 24th version. Happily though, just in the last year or so, the correct October 24th version has emerged, and the sound quality is great, so I've used that. (I carefully checked to make sure they actually were different performances.)

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Presence of the Lord (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Key to the Highway (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
11 Roll It Over (Derek & the Dominos)
12 Let It Rain - Drum Solo - Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)
13 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bn6srhR7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sxj0Nztsa6c5voH/file

Regarding the cover art photo, see my comments for the cover of the October 23rd early show. I know the photo comes from a different concert, but I'm using it anyway because I don't have a better one from the actual photo. 

However, in May 2025, I replaced the photo, due to that one being blurry and low-res. The replacement is from the same concert and taken by the same photographer.

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-23-1970, Late Show

I just posted an album of Derek and the Dominos playing the early show at the Fillmore East in New York City, on October 23rd, 1970. You might not want to download that, because it only contains half of the set and only half of that is recorded in soundboard quality. However, if you like this band at all, you really need to get this one, the late show from that same night, as well as the late show from October 24th, which I will be posting next.

These two late shows are considered the "crown jewels" of all Derek and the Dominos live recordings, and for good reason. In terms of performance, the band had a very good night, but not one of their very best nights. (Surprisingly, they had no idea they were being recorded.) However, what makes the Fillmore shows so outstanding is the sound quality. Not only are they pristine soundboards that sound about as good as you could ever hope for, but ALL other live recordings from the band are audience bootlegs that sound markedly worse.

The band's Fillmore recordings sound so good that two official live albums have been made out of them. In 1973, the album "In Concert" was released, featuring a double albums' worth of songs for those concerts. In 1994, the album "Live at the Fillmore" was released, featuring even more from those same two concerts.

So, you may ask, why not just get one or both of the official albums instead of this? There are several reasons, but the main one is that some performances can only be found on one of the live albums, other performances are only on the other one, and still more aren't on either of them. Furthermore, the running orders for both official albums are a mess. What I'm presenting here are the complete late shows, in the correct track order, at the highest sound quality.

To be more specific, there are 17 officially released performed songs from both late shows in all (including one from the recently released soundtrack "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bar"). I've discovered an additional seven performed songs from bootlegs of the late shows that are in the same excellent soundboard quality as the officially released stuff. (This doesn't include the October 23rd early show that I just posted, which contains three more songs at soundboard quality and three songs at audience quality.)

I did some research on what die-hard Eric Clapton fan think of the sound qualities of various official and unofficial versions of these shows, so I could use only the best quality sources. Many fans (though not all) thought that the MFSL version of the "In Concert" tracks were superior to the "Live at the Fillmore" versions, so I used those whenever possible. In 2011, the super deluxe 40th anniversary edition of the "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" album included a remaster of the "In Concert" tracks, but the general opinion is that this remastering is inferior, so I've avoided that.

At first glance, bootleg versions of the late shows essentially sound as good as the official recordings, because they draw from the same source, a mix that was made in 1972 in preparation for the "in Concert" album. However, the bootlegged versions have a lot of hiss for the October 24th late show, and have generally combated that by using a lot of noise reduction. So the official versions are better, since they had more expert means to get rid of the hiss. Thus, I've used the official versions whenever possible.

To make matters more complicated, all the officially released versions have put those songs out of order, and even most bootlegs have the songs out of order. I researched this on the Internet until I got the song order right.

Keep in mind I'm not a total musical purist. I want music that I'll enjoy listening to, and if that means making some edits to fix what I consider flaws, so be it. With these late shows, I didn't make any edits to the music itself, but I did make some edits to the crowd noise before and after songs. One thing I generally do with live recordings is cut out the boring bits between songs, such as long stretches of guitar tuning or relative silence. I did some of that. (By the way, Clapton and the other band members almost never talked between songs, and I didn't cut any of what little talking that exists.)

But I had to do a surprising amount of work of the cheering after the songs ended. Typically, the officially released versions have just a few seconds of crowd noise, which slowly fades out. This isn't good, in my opinion, because it sounds obvious that edits were made. I discovered that the bootleg versions generally kept all the clapping until the audience got quiet again. So, in most cases, I used the official versions for the songs themselves and then pasted in the clapping from the bootlegs instead.

Note that there is no clapping at all after "Blues Power." This is because the band came to a complete stop at the end of the song, but only waited a couple of seconds before starting the next tune, giving the audience no time to react. I was able to confirm this by checking with some inferior sounding audience recordings of the late shows, that have it that exact way.

Also note that the first track, which consists of an MC introducing the band, is an audience recording. No soundboard version of this appears to exist. But if the recordings of the early show are any indication, the audience recording sounds better anyway, since the MC's microphone wasn't picked up by the soundboard.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Key to the Highway (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Presence of the Lord (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)
11 Let It Rain - Drum Solo - Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)
12 Crossroads (Derek & the Dominos)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ifd3g

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TELfQL9R

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/08GLyIXmZwgiA0j/file 

Regarding the cover art photo, see my comments for the cover of the October 23rd early show. I know the photo comes from a different concert, but I'm using it anyway because I don't have a better one from the actual photo and this one is so good. Actually, I like this photo so much that I made a painting of it when I was a teenager! I think the contrast of blues and reds looks really cool.

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-23-1970, Early Show

I'm going to start posting more live Derek and the Dominos, the short-lived band that, in my opinion, was the pinnacle of Eric Clapton's long career. When it comes to live music by this group, there are two concerts that tower above all others, due to sound quality: back to back nights at the Fillmore East in New York City, on October 23rd and 24th, 1970. The band only toured for a few months in the latter half of 1970, and these two concerts appear to be the only concerts by them that were professionally recorded as soundboards.

The band played two shows per evening, with each show lasting nearly two hours. Unfortunately, a only few songs from the early show on October 23rd recorded at soundboard quality are known to exist, and a few more songs from it were recorded as an audience bootleg. Even more frustratingly, no recordings of the early show on October 24th are known to exist whatsoever.

This, I'm making three albums out of the Fillmore performances: the October 23rd early show, the October 23rd late show, and the October 24th late show. The two late shows are the crown jewels of all Derek and the Dominos live recordings, with two hours each of the band playing at the highest sound quality.

The October 23rd early show is the runt of the litter by comparison. At slightly less than an hour long, it's only half of the early set, and about half of that is a mere audience recording. But it's also, by far, the least known of the Fillmore recordings, so I'm pleased to make these more available. And even though half of it comes from an audience bootleg, that portion still sounds at least as good as any other live recording of the band from any other concert except for the two Fillmore late shows.

All the officially released live Derek and the Dominos recordings come from those two late shows. I'll go into that in more detail in a subsequent post. But suffice to say here that nothing from the October 23rd early show has been officially released. In fact, nearly all bootlegs of the two Fillmore shows don't include any songs from the early show either.

Three songs here (the first two and the last one) are recorded in soundboard quality. Three more - "Blues Power," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Tell the Truth" are recorded in audience quality. I've heard that all of "Blues Power" and the first half of "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" do exist in soundboard quality, but I haven't been able to find a recording of that. If you know of one, please let me know.

All the songs through "Tell the Truth" appear in the order they were played in concert that night. But then even the audience recording comes to an end, after part of the song "Presence of the Lord." I haven't included that, since it's only the first couple minutes of the song. Then, somehow, the soundboard recording reemerged with all of "Little Wing," the last song of the early show.

By the way, what bootlegs exist of the early show usually claim to include a soundboard of "Presence of the Lord." However, the recording of that on those bootlegs are exactly the same as the recording of that song from the late show, only played at a slightly slower speed. So I haven't included that either. By the way, no one can remember what songs were played after "Presence of the Lord" and "Little Wing," though apparently it is known there were three of them.

All of the songs played in this early show were played at both of the late shows. But each performance of each song contained unique soloing, and could be very different from other performances. For instance, the version of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" from this early show is seven and a half minutes long, but the version of that song from the late show is 14 and a half minutes long. Given the lack of well recorded live music from this band, this early show has been unjustly forgotten.

By the way, the first track consists of an announcer introducing the band. I found both audience and soundboard recordings of this. But the audience version sounded much better (no doubt since the announcer's microphone wasn't connected to the soundboard), so I've used that.

I noticed the audience-sourced songs were at a slightly different pitch than the soundboard-sourced ones, so I changed the pitch on them to hopefully fix that.

Also, there was a sound problem with "Have You Ever Loved a Woman." The recording of the first verse (about two minutes into the song) was very messed up. There were some glitches there, but the main problem was the volume was so low that it was nearly inaudible. I tried increasing the volume to match the rest, but it sounded so hissy that it was really bad. So instead, I copied and pasted in the first verse from the October 24th late show version of the song. Then I matched the pitch and tempo, and patched that in. It's noticeable that the sound quality suddenly gets better for a little while, but I think that's much preferred to the sound getting horrible for a while. It only affects about thirty seconds of the song.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vWwhdUPw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q5bRQevzbVAruRZ/file

Photos of Eric Clapton with a beard and wearing a horizontally striped shirt are closely associated with the two Fillmore nights. For instance, the official live album "Live at the Fillmore" uses one such photo for the album cover. But, in fact, it turns out those photos were taken at a concert in Port Chester, New York, over a month later. At the time of the Fillmore shows, Clapton hadn't even grown his beard.

That said, I'm using one of the beard-and-striped-shirt photos for the cover anyway. In part that's because I can't find any good photos that actually come from the Fillmore. But also, I'm posting three albums from the Fillmore shows, and I've found three really nice photos (that actually come from Port Chester), allowing me to have a unified look for all three albums.

In May 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Derek and the Dominos - Layla Album Outtakes (1970)

I recently posted an album of alternative versions of songs from Derek and the Dominos' "Layla" album. This is a companion piece to that, except it contains the group doing songs not on that album, and also not on the imagined follow-up album "Devil Road" (with a couple of exceptions).

In my opinion, if you have this, and the alternates and Devil Road albums I just mentioned, plus of course the "Layla" album itself, you should have all of the worthy studio material from this group. A lot of extra material has been released, but in my opinion, much of that isn't very good. For instance, some long jams that meander for nearly 20 minutes each (and don't feature Duane Allman - I included the one that does have him). Whereas there are a number of other outtakes that are good and haven't been released.

One of the songs, "Till I See You Again," sounds very different than the others. That's because it's drummer Jim Gordon singing. Gordon was a singer-songwriter as well as a very talented drummer. During the Layla sessions, he came in early to record his own songs, in the hopes that one or more of them could get on the Layla album, or possibly for a solo album. Gordon would later slowly go insane and murder his own mother, putting him in prison for the rest of his life. As a result, Gordon's songs probably will never be officially released, even though they're pretty good.

01 Tell the Truth [A-Side Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Roll It Over [B-Side Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Mean Old World [Acoustic Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Till I See You Again [Jim Gordon on Vocals] (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Tender Love [Instrumental] (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
08 It Hurts Me Too [Acoustic Instrumental] (Derek & the Dominos)
09 I've Been All Day [Instrumental] (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Jam IV [Eric and Duane Duel] (Derek & the Dominos & the Allman Brothers Band)
11 Mean Old World [Rehearsal Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
12 Matchbox (Derek & the Dominos with Johnny Cash & Carl Perkins)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/o9C7DPZg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7QSnDCzWeMgCmcY/file

The cover is another one of only a very limited number of photos of Derek and the Dominos including Duane Allman (who is wearing a tie-dye T-shirt). Bobby Whitlock is just behind Eric Clapton, looking extremely stoned.

In May 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Derek and the Dominos - Layla Album Alternates (1970)

In my opinion, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" by Derek and the Dominos is one of the greatest albums of all time, and the highlight of Eric Clapton's long career.

Over the years, outtakes from the recording sessions for the album have been made public, either officially or through bootlegs. For this album, I've collected the best alternate versions of the songs from the album to create an alternate version of the album. There are 14 songs on the original album; I found alternates for 10 of them. In addition, there are outtakes of different songs recorded during those sessions, but I'll save that for another album.

One great thing about the Layla album is the guitar interplay between Clapton and Duane Allman. Some, but not all, of the songs here have Duane playing on them. One good example of the alternate version of the song "Layla." Strangely, despite there being multiple official releases of Layla with entire extra discs of bonus tracks, this version has only ever come out on bootleg. In fact, nearly all of the takes here are from bootlegs.

01 Layla [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
02 I Looked Away [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Have You Ever Loved a Woman [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Bell Bottom Blues [Instrumental Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Tell the Truth [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Anyday [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
07 It's Too Late [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Keep on Growing [Instrumental Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad [Alternate Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out [Instrumental Version] (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MPLoWhKE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/saJajjVYOzcz6Qy/file

The cover is one of the very few photos of Derek and the Dominos that includes Duane Allman. In May 2025, I improved the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Derek & the Dominos - Live and Rare (1970)

If you want to listen to the best live Derek & the Dominos, check out their albums "Live at the Fillmore," or "In Concert." Both of them cover two nights at the Fillmore East on October 23 and 24, 1970. Better yet, listen to the versions posted here that contain full sets from both nights. Those were the only two nights the band was ever recorded live at soundboard quality.

But, assuming you're a big fan of the group and you already have that material, you should get this too. Unfortunately, the band was only in existence for a short period of time, and most of their live shows that got recorded by bootleggers don't have great sound quality. What I've done is try to select the "best of the rest" based both on song selection and sound. The band had a lot of great songs that they rarely performed in concert, such as "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Keep on Growing."

Furthermore, they occasionally did some unusual covers and/or played with special guests. One song here is sung by Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie fame. A member of the group, Bobby Whitlock, sings the blues classic "Call It Stormy Monday."

So, overall, while the sound on this album isn't soundboard quality, it's still generally pretty good, and the song selection and/or the special guests make this something any fans of the band should hear. The songs are from seven different shows, and they're ordered chronologically.

I found a little known bootleg and included three songs from that: "Roll It Over," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Bad Boy." The reason it's little known is because it only contains four songs, and its location is unknown. It is known it comes from one of the August 1970 concerts in England, but that's it. I decided to include songs from this source because the sound quality is unusually good, by the modest bootleg standards for this band. I didn't include the fourth song, "Blues Power," because the vocals went into the red too much and didn't sound good. 

All three of the songs from this source ended badly. It seems the bootlegger was worried about running out of tape, so turned the tape off the moment the song ended. Thus, I used audience applause from a different bootleg by the band and added them to the ends of these songs. In the case of "Roll It Over," I found a song in the same key ending on the same chord, so I was able to let the final notes ring out while the applause started. 

I edited the songs "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Layla" using the X-Minus sound editing program to boost the vocals.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

UPDATE: On May 31, 2025, I redid the mp3 download file. I removed two songs, "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" and "Layla." Both of them are from a concert in Tampa, Florida where Duane Allman joined the band for the entire concert. I removed them because I decided to post that concert in full.

01 Crossroads (Delaney & Bonnie with Eric Clapton)
02 Don’t Know Why (Delaney & Bonnie with Eric Clapton)
03 Roll It Over [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Have You Ever Loved a Woman [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Bad Boy [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Bell Bottom Blues [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Keep on Growing (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Call It Stormy Monday (Derek & the Dominos)
09 All Night Long (Derek & the Dominos with Delaney Bramlett)
10 Crossroads (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oCzgwJUN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ouIauumc5pIgbLT/file

The cover photo comes from a concert in Detroit on December 3, 1970. I adjusted the brightness and contract to make the picture look better. In May 2025, I ran it through the Krea AI program to improve it a little more.

Derek & the Dominos – Devil Road - Non-Album Tracks (1971)

Derek and the Dominos were a great band, and the peak of Eric Clapton’s career. Unfortunately, they didn’t last long, and there attempt at a second album in mid-1971 fizzled out. I’ve created a double album of what might have been, about the same length as the great Layla album.

A few tracks came out on Clapton’s Crossroads box set. There are a few other good still unreleased outtakes. Additionally, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock was working on a solo album at the same time. Some of the tracks on this album (also called Bobby Whitlock), plus one that was held over to his next album (Raw Velvet), essentially featured Derek and the Dominos, including Clapton. I’ve included those, as well as a solo Whitlock song that doesn’t feature Clapton, Dreams of a Hobo, to end the album on a mellow note in the same way Whitlock’s Thorn Tree in the Garden ends the Layla album.

I could have used the same version of Got to Get Better in a Little While that appears on a Layla reissue, that had Whitlock’s voice and keyboards added in the 1990s. However, in my opinion, it’s not nearly as good as the version Derek and the Dominos played on the Johnny Cash Show in November 1970. That was a live track, but with excellent sound, so I carefully edited out the crowd noises to make it appear like a studio track.

The problem with the album I’d made is that it had lots of Whitlock-sung songs, and instrumentals, and not enough Clapton-sung songs. To fix that, I took a performance of Roll It Over from the Fillmore East done in slow style (as opposed to the fast style on a quickly withdrawn single), and also edited the crowd noise out to make it sound like a studio track. Then I did the same thing to Motherless Children, a live track from the Electric Factory Theatre in Philadelphia in October 1970. It has pretty much the exact same arrangement as the song does on Clapton’s 1974 album. I also added a full band version of Mean Old World , an outtake from the Layla album.

But the highlight of the album for me is Devil Road. Derek and the Dominos was the backing band for this song for a planned solo album by the relatively obscure singer Renee Armand. It’s a bit odd to hear Armand’s female vocals, but that doesn’t matter much, because it’s a 13 minute long song, and the vast majority of it is Clapton going off with one of the best solos of his career.

The final result is seven songs sung by Clapton, five sung by Whitlock, one sung by Armand (that’s mostly instrumental), and three instrumentals. So it’s a bit odd, compared to the great Layla album, but what we have to work with is very limited, due to the recording sessions fizzling out early. I think it  holds together as a good listen.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

Here’s the song list:

01 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Hello L.A., Bye Bye Birmingham (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Roll It Over (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Back in My Life Again (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Evil (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Moody Jam [Instrumental] (Derek & the Dominos)
07 One More Chance (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Where There's a Will, There’s a Way (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Mean Old Frisco (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Snake Lake Blues [Instrumental] (Derek & the Dominos)
11 The Scenery Has Slowly Changed (Derek & the Dominos)
12 Got to Get Better in a Little While [Instrumental Version] (Derek & the Dominos)
13 Motherless Children (Derek & the Dominos)
14 Mean Old World (Derek & the Dominos)
15 Devil Road (Derek & the Dominos with Renee Armand)
16 The Dreams of a Hobo (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LDRjcFhg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Al0SAyW3nM9FfLu/file

Note that the album cover was made with the help of PJ from Alums I Wish Existed. An Internet search found a photo that evoked the "Devil Road" concept. The never got close enough to finishing the album to come up with a name or cover art.