Jim Gordon, famed session drummer convicted of murdering his mother, dies at 77

Jim Gordon, the prolific session drummer and convicted murderer who played with some of rock’s most famed artists — including the Beach Boys, George Harrison and Eric Clapton, whose classic “Layla” he’s credited with co-writing — before he was sentenced to prison for killing his mother, died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. He was 77.

His death was confirmed by a publicist, Bob Merlis, who said Gordon died of natural causes “after a long incarceration and lifelong battle with mental illness.”

A Los Angeles native, Gordon was a member of the so-called Wrecking Crew of studio musicians who shaped the sound of countless pop hits in the 1960s and ’70s; later he played in Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos and as part of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen band. In 1983, Gordon killed his mother, a crime he described to the Washington Post as “kind of like a dream”; he was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This story is developing.