If you take nothing else from Delaney and Bonnie's short, high-profile, high-energy turn in the rock spotlight, take this: any friend of a superstar is a friend of the people, and if you're in music for the money, press, perks, and a backup band recruited from the cover of Rolling Stone, don't mix musical and personal relationships – love never lasts. Which is what happened to Delaney and Bonnie shortly after the release of Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, their sixth and last album, when first the marriage and then the band unraveled. Without the band, '60s superstars like Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Leon Russell, Dave Mason, Duane Allman, and Steve Cropper – just a few of D&B's fabulous musical posse – departed, their absence keenly felt, as life turned into a parade of studio gigs, club dates, motels, and frequent-flyer miles so dreary that you wonder if maybe the Roman who coined the phrase carpe diem played the guitar.

This album has some meaty gospel-inflected rock – Dave Mason's "Only You Know and I Know," "Wade in the River Jordan," and "Sound of the City" are standouts – and if it isn't one of their best moments (pick up Delaney and Bonnie and Friends on Tour with Eric Clapton to hear their best), it's only because the rest of their work was really good. Bonnie Bramlett was recruited, at age 15, into the Ike and Tina Turner band to become the first white Ikette, which in those days told you what you needed to know. In an era when identities were changed like socks and identity fraud was a psychological Band-Aid, not the fruit of credit card theft (Delaney and Bonnie were authentic Southerners), fans and musicians could hardly believe it. The pair were already road-hardened veterans when they found themselves on center stage with a band of young musicians looking for safe haven as they crossed from the '60s into the '70s.