Bill Withers was born in 1938 in a West Virginia coal miner’s town, the youngest of six children. His father died when he was a child and he was raised by his mother and grandmother.
His entry to the music world came late – at the age of 29 – after a nine-year stint in the Navy.
He taught himself to play guitar between shifts at his job making toilet seats for the Boeing aircraft company, and used his wages to pay for studio sessions in LA.
“I figured out that you didn’t need to be a virtuoso to accompany yourself,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in 2015.
He recorded his first album, Just As I Am, with Booker T Jones in 1970. It included the mournful ballad Ain’t No Sunshine, which earned him his first Grammy award the subsequent year.
He scored another million-selling hit with Lean On Me in 1972.
Gospel-tinged and inspirational, the song was based on his experiences growing up in a West Virginia coal mining town: When times were hard, neighbors would lend each other help and assistance, and the memory stuck with the singer.
It was later performed at the inaugurations of both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
But Withers quit at the top, walking away from his career after scoring another pop hit with Just The Two Of Us, although he occasionally toured with Grover Washington Jr in the 1990s. Although he stopped recording in 1985, his songs remained a major influence on R&B and hip-hop. Known for his smooth baritone vocals and sumptuous soul arrangements, he wrote some of the 70s best-remembered songs, including also Just The Two Of Us, Lovely Day and Use Me.
On Lovely Day, he set the record for the longest sustained note on a US chart hit, holding a high E for 18 seconds.
As a younger man, he suffered with a debilitating stutter, and in 2015, he and fellow stutterer Ed Sheeran put on a benefit concert for the Stuttering Association For The Young.
The same year 2015, Withers was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame, and when asked how it felt by US TV show CBS Good Morning, he joked, “It’s like a pre-obituary!”
Despite his influence on generations of musicians, he did not keep track of music after his career ended.
“These days,” he said in 2015, “I wouldn’t know a pop chart from a Pop-Tart.”
But he was aware that his compositions had become part of the fabric of music.
“What few songs I wrote during my brief career, there ain’t a genre that somebody didn’t record them in,” he told Rolling Stone in 2014. “I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with.“
“The hardest thing in songwriting is to be simple and yet profound,” agreed Sting in Still Bill, a documentary about Wither’s career, “and Bill seemed to understand, intrinsically and instinctively, how to do that,”
The star was given an Ivor Novello songwriting award in the UK three years ago.
Bill Withers died in Los Angeles from heart complications at age 81 on March 30, 2020.
Tributes:
“With his poetry and music, he spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other.
“As private a life as he lived, close to intimate family and friends, his music forever belongs to the world. In this difficult time (Covid), we pray his music offers comfort and entertainment as fans hold tight to loved ones.”
US musician Chance the Rapper led tributes, describing the singer as “the greatest” and recalling some of his own personal memories.
Rock star and actor Lenny Kravitz posted that his “voice, songs, and total expression gave us love, hope, and strength”.
Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson said he was “very sad to hear about Bill Withers passing” – calling him “a songwriter’s songwriter” – while John Legend added that “life wouldn’t be the same without him” and his music.
And BBC Radio 2’s Trevor Nelson wrote the star’s music was “a remedy for these nonsensical times”.
“He was a genius singer/songwriter. Can’t listen to Bill without feeling emotional.”
