Bobby Whitlock, co-founder of the pioneering band Derek and the Dominos alongside Eric Clapton and a successful solo musician who recorded with George Harrison, has died. He was 77.

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

How do you express in but a few words the grandness of one man who came from abject poverty in the south to heights unimagined in such a short time?” Whitlock’s wife, Coco Carmel Whitlock, said in a statement to CBS News.