On October 30, 1970, Derek and the Dominos — Eric Clapton with keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon — played the University Gym at the State University of New York at Albany, with the British band Toe Fat opening. The date fell the night after Buffalo’s Kleinhans Music Hall and a week after the two Fillmore East shows later released as “In Concert,” while “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” finished at Miami’s Criteria Studios on October 1, was still ten days from the record stores. Duane Allman, whose slide guitar defines that album, never toured with the group and sat in only at Tampa and Syracuse that December, so Albany got the lean four-piece, playing for a crowd that could not yet have owned the record. Fifty-six years on, it stands as one of the Capital Region’s great before-the-legend nights.
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