National Post (National Edition)
Grammy winner best known for Ain’t No Sunshine
Walked away from the music industry in the 1980s
Bill Withers, who has died aged 81, was a singer and songwriter who earned enduring fame with three songs in particular, Ain’t No Sunshine, Lean On Me and Lovely Day; his mellifluous baritone made for a rich and emotional soul sound, and although he effectively retired from the business in the 1980s, he remained a huge influence on hiphop and R’n’B.
William Harrison Withers Jr. was born on July 4, 1938 in the small mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia. The youngest of six, he was born with a stutter, an affliction that he said made it difficult for him to fit in with other children. He joined the U.S. Navy at 18 and served for nine years, during which time he overcame his stutter and began writing and singing.
In 1965 he headed for Los Angeles to seek his musical fame and fortune, and did factory work while recording demo tapes and singing in clubs. Eventually one of his efforts was heard by Clarence Avant — known as the Black Godfather — who signed him to Sussex Records and teamed him up with Booker T Jones.
His debut album Just As I Am was released in 1971, with Stephen Stills on lead guitar, and Ain’t No Sunshine — a classic “breakup” song — and Grandma’s Hands its lead singles. In a nod to the life Withers was leaving behind, the cover depicted him in his last regular job, at Weber Aircraft in Burbank, Calif., holding his lunch box.
The LP was an immediate success, while Ain’t No Sunshine sold a million copies and won him the first of three Grammy Awards; he put together a band and began touring. And there was no “difficult second album” syndrome for Withers: Still Bill (1972) topped the Billboard soul chart and went to No 4 in the pop rankings. Its lead single Lean On Me reached No 1, sold three million copies and was his second gold disc; the following month’s Use Me also went gold. A few weeks later Withers recorded the well-regarded Bill Withers, Live at Carnegie Hall album, and although a contract dispute prevented him from recording for a while, he headed to Zaire to perform with James Brown, BB King and Etta James in the run-up to the Rumble in the Jungle match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman; footage from the gig was eventually used in the film about the fight, When We Were Kings (1996), as well as the 2008 documentary Soul Power.
When Sussex Records folded, Withers signed to Columbia in 1975 and recorded the album Making Music; it included the single She’s Lonely, which featured on the soundtrack to the film Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Withers performed Ain’t No Sunshine on Saturday Night Live, and made an album a year for the next three years.
The middle LP of those three, Menagerie (1977), contained one of his best-loved songs, Lovely Day (written with Skip Scarborough) — on which Withers holds a note for a full 18 seconds. It is thought to be the second-longest note in British chart history, only two seconds behind the Norwegian singer Morten Harket of A-ha, on Summer Moved On.
But Withers’s relationship with Columbia was not a happy one, and there was a seven-year gap between the albums ‘Bout Love in 1978 and Watching You Watching Me in 1985. He was frustrated, he said, by what he called the label’s “blaxperts,” preaching to him about what sort of music shifted units.
Matters were not helped when they signed up the A-Team actor Mr. T at a time when they were, in effect, Withers felt, preventing him from releasing his choice of material. Watching You Watching Me proved to be his swansong, although his music never went away, especially his best-known songs, and in 2015 Ed Sheeran joined Dr. John and others in recreating the Live at Carnegie Hall album.
Before that, in 2009, the acclaimed documentary Still Bill premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. It was, said, the critic Roger Ebert, “about a man who topped the charts, walked away from it all in 1985 and is pleased that he did.”
In 2015 Withers was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Stevie Wonder. “I see it as an award of attrition,” he said. “What few songs I wrote during my brief career, there ain’t a genre that somebody didn’t record them in.
“I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with. I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.”
Bill Withers married the actress Denise Nicholas in 1973, but they divorced the following year. In 1976 he married Marcia Johnson, who assumed control of his business affairs. She survives him along with their daughter and son, who both help to run his music publishing companies.
I WAS ABLE TO WRITE SONGS THAT PEOPLE COULD IDENTIFY WITH. — BILL WITHERS