Bill Withers, the legendary soul singer behind 1970s hits like “Lean on Me,” “Lovely Day” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” died on Monday in Los Angeles.… He was 81.

The soulful singer and three-time Grammy winner died from heart complications.

Mr. Withers was well into his 30s when he began recording music, after growing up in a segregated coal-mining town in West Virginia, serving in the Navy and working as an aircraft mechanic. But during his 14-year recording career, starting with the album “Just As I Am” in 1971, he wrote and performed songs that have become anthems around the word, drawn from gritty blues, R&B and the era’s confessional style of lyrics.

Long after his de facto retirement from recording — he released his last album in 1985, after many battles with music industry executives — Mr. Withers entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 by Stevie Wonder.

Roger Ebert wrote this about Still Bill, a 2010 documentary about Withers:

"Still Bill" is about a man who topped the charts, walked away from it all in 1985 and is pleased that he did.

He didn't burn out. He hasn't burned out. He was free of the demons of drink and drugs. He is still happily married to his first and only wife. His grown kids still live at home -- Kori, who would like to follow her dad into music, and Todd, who is a law student. Marcia, his wife, has her MBA from UCLA and has manifestly looked after their finances, as we can guess after a look around their rambling hilltop home in a high-priced area of Los Angeles.…

He had a serious stutter until he was 20. We don't learn why it went away. Maybe music helped. The most emotional scenes in "Still Bill" show him accepting an award from a stutterers' association, and then talking with a roomful of kids who stutter. His advice is calm: He identifies with them, he observes that stuttering can make other people nervous, he says "we have to go just that little bit further to help them feel at ease."

He wipes away some tears in his eyes, and we suspect they have been unshed since childhood. Later he recalls being taunted to "spit it out!" -- as if stuttering were his decision. He says he decided while young to make the most of his opportunities, and did. He studied, joined the Navy, didn't own a guitar until 1970, and achieved his first hit record, "Ain't No Sunshine," in 1971.



Withers wasn't part of mainstream soul music. He used a few instruments -- guitar, bass, drums, piano -- and no driving beat. He depended on his pure baritone and his lyrics. Listen again to "Ain't No Sunshine," and you realize it is a rarity: a hit song that is essentially just a man singing.

Ebert was critical of only one part of the documentary:

Perhaps in an attempt to slip some "meaning" into the film, the documentarians Damani Baker and Alex Vlack arrange a conversation with the scholar Cornel West and Tavis Smiley from PBS. It feels like they're trying to lead Bill into heavy generalizations, but he won't go there. Withers seems as close to everyday Zen as I can imagine. He talks a great deal about his philosophy, to be sure, but it's direct and manifestly true: Make the most of your chances, do the best you can, stop when you're finished, love your family, enjoy life.

At 70, he sings once in the film, at a tribute to him in Brooklyn. And in his home recording studio, he and guitarist and songwriter Raul Midon collaborate on a song in Spanish, which I liked. He still has the voice, the chops and the presence. But he doesn't feel a need to spend days and weeks away from home proving that.... "I'm like pennies in your pocket," he says. "You know they're there, but you don't think about them."

posted by John Althouse Cohen on Friday, April 03, 2020

What a voice.

RIP.

RIP, Bill.

His music became an "earworm" that was welcome and not hated. RIP Mr. Withers and thank you for the sentiments in your music you shared with us all.

Rest In Peace Mr Withers.

When I was a kid, I bought three of his 45rpm singles, Ain't No Sunshine, Lean On Me, and Use Me, an awesome song.

Later in life, I kinda kept track of him because he was a curmudgeon, an anomaly in the music business; he had no manager, walked away from it all when record people kept trying to mold him to the current black music trends, and afterwards turning down all offers, never to return. For a complete unknown, his band for the first record was Jim Keltner on drums, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, and Stephen Stills and Booker T Jones on guitars, quite a line up. He was a very talented guy.

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3hBYTkI-sE

In case it doesn't show since I guess Karmanator is gone and don't see "old embed code" option, In The Name Of Love

What a rare person in the entertainment business to have been so level-headed.

I love the others, but was always kind of partial to this one:




Link to original video: https://youtu.be/EZldnP0lhHA

He has a great voice and enjoyed his music a lot. Another piece of my childhood is gone.

RIP Mr Withers and thank you for the music.

Ain't no sunshine when you're gone....

quote:

Another piece of my childhood is gone.

Exactly. RIP Sir.