Delaney & Bonnie and Friends – "Comin' Home" (1970)

I'm comin’ home . . .

To your love

[NOTE: “Comin’ Home” is the second of three records from this year’s class of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME to feature Eric Clapton, who joined up with Delaney & Bonnie (according to Robert Christgau) because he “found their youthful fun and mature equanimity an antidote to the formless pretensions of Cream and Blind Faith.”  What follows is an edited version of my original July 18, 2017 post about “Comin’ Home.”]

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Delaney Bramlett moved from Pontotoc County, Mississippi, to Los Angeles in 1959 and became a session musician.  He eventually was hired to play in the Shindogs, which was the house band for the ABC-TV series, Shindig!  (Other Shindogs included Glen Campbell, Billy Preston, and Leon Russell.)  

Shindig!

In 1967, Delaney married Bonnie Lynn O’Farrell, a talented young singer from a small town in southern Illinois who had once been a backup singer for the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.  She was the first white Ikette, but disguised her race with the help of a black wig and “Man Tan” skin darkener.

The couple then formed Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, which included Russell and other session veterans like Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Bobby Keys, Jim Price, Jim Keltner and Rita Coolidge.  (Take a look at the credits on the Derek and the Dominoes album, and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St., and All Things Must Pass, and The Concert for Bangladesh, and other classic rock albums from that era, and you’ll see those names over and over.)

Delaney and Bonnie got their big break when Eric Clapton invited them to be the opening act for the one and only Blind Faith tour.  Clapton seemed to enjoy playing with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends more than he did with Blind Faith, and recorded a live album with them that was very successful.

That album – titled On Tour with Eric Clapton – featured not only Clapton but also George Harrison and Dave Mason.

L to R: Clapton, Bonnie, Delaney, Harrison

Delaney & Bonnie and Friends sort of ran out of steam after that.  The group released its last studio album in 1972, and the couple got divorced the next year.

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Click here to listen to the On Tour with Eric Clapton version of “Comin’ Home,” which was recorded during a London performance in December 1969.

Click here to see a video of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends – including George Harrison and Eric Clapton – performing the song in Copenhagen about a week later.

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