This is not about song lyrics, but I didn't know where to put it.  :-[

When did the song "Layla" first come out? (The band Cream recorded it.) I know it was in the 60's, but when?

I have to know for a report.

Thanks,
Joelle

If you really meant Derek and the Dominos recorded it (Eric Clapton was in both so they're easily confused) then according to this site http://musicbase.h1.ru/PPB/ppb7/Bio_778.htm it came out in 1970 and was then re-released in '71

Nope, the one I'm looking for is Eric Clapton & Cream. Thanks for the info, though.

Joelle

I'm pretty sure we are talking about the same song.

Here's the first verse and chorus of the one I'm talking about

"What'll you do when you get lonely
And nobody's waiting by your side?
You've been running and hiding much too long.
You know it's just your foolish pride.


Layla, you've got me on my knees.
Layla, I'm begging, darling please.
Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind."

Eric Clapton also re-released it in an acoustic form recently (as in within the past five years or so)

Yes, we're talking about the same song. It was just recorded by 2 different bands with Eric Clapton.

Eric Clapton recorded Layla after Cream broke up- there is no way Layla was ever released by Cream.  Perhaps you are confused because in the 90's a compilation album was put out called "the Cream of Clapton", and it included songs he recorded while he was in the Yardbirds, Cream and under Derek and the Dominoes, as well as recent solo work.  As far as I know, Cream never did get back together to record......    

This page implies that it was done by Eric Clapton and Cream

http://www.lyrics.net.ua/song/10654

but this is the only page which sort of implies this.  Everywhere else I looked says that Cream split in the late 60's and Eric formed Derek and the Dominos and they released Layla

What is the background of this song? I heard that it has something to do with Clapton's attraction to a wife of one of the Beatles, but I'm not sure.

"Layla" was written by Clapton about the wife of George Harrison, Patti Boyd.  She left Harrison and married Clapton, and during their marriage he also wrote "Wonderful Tonight" for her.  She must have been pretty great because George Harrison wrote the songs " I need you" and "Something (in the way she moves)"   for her   :o

As has already been stated, Cream broke up in the late 60s (either '68 or '69). Eric Clapton joined Derek and the Dominoes, who then released Layla. The site you linked is incorrect, since Layla had not been written until after Cream broke up and, to the best of my knowledge, Cream never re-grouped. Also, according to iTunes, Layla was recorded by Derek and the Dominoes.

From what I know about it...

It was recorded in 1970, charted as a single in March, 1971 (went nowhere) and then made it back on the charts in May, 1972, and on this second try both the single and the album sold big time and have been heard on radio since.

(The "Layla" album had to wait 2 years to get noticed but The Moody Blues beat that "record" the same year with "Days of Future Passed" and its original 1967 release date)

Full info on the song can be found here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layla

Eric Clapton himself co-wrote the song, and first recorded it in 1970 as a member of Derek And The Dominos.

Two decades later, in the early 1990s, Clapton re-recorded it as a solo artist, this time an "unplugged" version.