Bill Withers

Bill Withers distinguished himself through a baritone voice of uncommon warmth and depth. Even rarer were the composers who matched the West Virginian’s innate capacity to convey an expansive spectrum of human sentiments—elation alongside appreciation, envy, and malice—with equal measures of economy and force. Entering the spotlight relatively late, this archetypal R&B everyman had reached age 33 when the timeless ballad “Ain’t No Sunshine” from Just as I Am (1971) transformed him overnight from aircraft mechanic into a platinum-selling, Grammy recipient. Across the decade that followed, he fused soul, gospel, folk, and funk with uncommon skill. Further gold records arrived via “Lean on Me” and “Use Me,” both drawn from the likewise successful Still Bill (1972); Menagerie (1977) matched that commercial standing behind the single “Lovely Day,” and a second Grammy arrived for “Just the Two of Us” (1981), his partnership with Grover Washington, Jr. Departing the scene early, Withers delivered his final recording, Watching You Watching Me (1985), thereby completing a body of work that later supplied material for musicians spanning numerous genres. Recognition came before his death at 81, when he was welcomed into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Born William Harrison Withers, Jr. on July 4, 1938, in Slab Fork, West Virginia, to a maid and a coal miner, he grew up in the nearby town of Beckley. Although he composed his initial song at age four, his abilities remained dormant for another thirty years. He devoted his late teens and twenties to service in the U.S. Navy as an aircraft mechanic. After nine years he received his discharge and settled in San Jose, taking work first as a milkman, then manufacturing aircraft components, and eventually returning to airplane maintenance. While attending a Lou Rawls performance at an Oakland venue, Withers learned the financial scale of the headliner’s payout and promptly purchased a guitar to hone his own vocal and songwriting craft. His first commercial release was the self-written “Three Nights and a Morning,” an upbeat, gritty number produced, arranged, and issued by Mort Garson in 1967; the single proved an isolated effort. After relocating to Los Angeles and securing another aircraft-mechanic position—this time installing toilets—he financed a demo recording. Ray Jackson of the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band, among the session players, passed the tape to Forest Hamilton at Stax, who facilitated an introduction to Sussex Records’ Clarence Avant. Moved by the original composition “Grandma’s Hands,” Avant offered Withers a contract.

Avant paired the newcomer with Booker T. Jones and several of the keyboardist-producer’s M.G.’s associates, augmented by Stephen Stills on guitar, Jim Keltner on drums, and Chris Ethridge on bass. The resulting Just as I Am contained twelve tracks, ten of them originals. The album appeared on Billboard’s Top LP’s chart in June 1971. Although “Harlem” was promoted as the opening single, disc jockeys favored the B-side ballad “Ain’t No Sunshine,” prompting Sussex to re-press the record with reversed sides; the track climbed to number three on the Hot 100 and number six on the R&B chart. The follow-up “Grandma’s Hands” reached number 18 on the R&B listing. Shortly before Still Bill attained its number 39 peak, Withers contributed to J.J. Johnson’s score for the Bill Cosby film Man and Boy; a few months later he supplied “Cold Bologna,” on which he also played guitar, to the Isley Brothers’ Givin’ It Back. In March of the next year “Ain’t No Sunshine” earned two Grammy nominations and captured Best Rhythm & Blues Song, while Withers contended for Best New Artist, an honor ultimately awarded to Carly Simon.

He assembled a touring ensemble that included Ray Jackson on keyboards, drummer James Gadson, bassist Melvin Dunlap, guitarist Benorce Blackmon—all veterans of the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band—and percussionist Bobbye Hall. During a short touring respite the same musicians helped Withers record and produce his second album. Still Bill surpassed the debut commercially, climbing to number four on the album chart after entering in May 1972. “Lean on Me” and “Use Me” became successive hits; the gospel-inflected former reached the summit of both the pop and R&B charts, while the funk-driven latter settled at number two on each. Before the next studio set, the non-album single “Let Us Love” gave Withers his fifth Top 20 R&B entry, and Live at Carnegie Hall became his third consecutive Top Ten R&B album. Captured the previous October, the double live collection introduced fresh material such as the anti-war narrative “I Can’t Write Left-Handed” and a reworking of “Cold Bologna” retitled “Cold Baloney,” which closed a vigorous medley that opened with “Harlem.” Around this period Withers also co-wrote and performed on the title track of José Feliciano’s Compartments.

Supported once more by his core band plus harpist Dorothy Ashby and a guest spot from Feliciano, Withers concluded his Sussex tenure with ’Justments. The candid, emotionally raw collection entered the charts in April 1974, the same month he and actress Denise Nicholas—who had wed the previous January—initiated divorce proceedings. Peaking at number seven on the R&B album chart, it yielded the Top 20 R&B singles “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh,” “You,” and “Heartbreak Road.” Nicholas herself penned the tender highlight “Can We Pretend.” Also in 1974, Withers appeared at the landmark Zaire 74 festival alongside James Brown, B.B. King, and future collaborators the Crusaders, and he composed and produced two tracks for Gladys Knight & the Pips’ I Feel a Song.

In 1975 Bobby Womack invited Withers to share lead vocals on the charting single “It’s All Over Now,” a title that coincidentally reflected Sussex Records’ own circumstances. Withers signed with Columbia, where he would issue all subsequent releases. Between 1975 and 1978 he delivered a new album each year. While the first Columbia project, Making Music, still credited several Sussex-era musicians as co-writers, it established a pattern of employing an array of prominent session players—including the Brothers Johnson, Wah Wah Watson, Ralph MacDonald, and Ray Parker, Jr.—and brought Larry Nash aboard as co-producer. Anchored by the number 10 R&B single “Make Love to Your Mind,” the album reached number seven on the R&B chart. Blackmon and Dunlap rejoined for the Withers-produced Naked & Warm, which lacked major singles yet featured the swaggering “Close to Me,” reminiscent of “Use Me,” and the expansive eleven-minute “City of the Angels.” Co-produced with Keni Burke, Clifford Coulter, and Clarence McDonald, Menagerie returned Withers to the upper chart reaches in 1977 via the soaring Skip Scarborough collaboration “Lovely Day,” his fifth Top 40 pop hit and number six R&B entry. ’Bout Love, guided by Paul Smith, closed the decade’s output and placed two additional singles on the R&B chart.

Although seven years elapsed before the next studio album, Withers remained intermittently active as a collaborator. He contributed to Quincy Jones’ I Heard That!! and, alongside Clifford Coulter, co-wrote and co-produced material for Hodges, James & Smith. Entering the 1980s, he co-produced Coulter’s The Better Part of Me and sang lead on “Soul Shadows” for the Crusaders. Most prominently, he joined saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr.—an early interpreter of both “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean on Me”—on “Just the Two of Us,” co-written with Ralph MacDonald and William Salter. The ballad appeared on Washington’s 1980 album Winelight, emerged as a single early the following year, and peaked inside the Top Five on the Hot 100, R&B, and adult-contemporary charts. Nominated for four Grammys, it earned Withers a second win in the Best Rhythm & Blues Song category.

Columbia’s relationship with Withers grew strained over the next several years, with the label rejecting material it deemed insufficiently commercial; suggestions that he record Elvis Presley covers only exacerbated tensions. A lone 1981 single, “U.S.A.,” surfaced, while from 1982 through 1984 Withers added background vocals to Don Henley’s “Unclouded Day,” co-wrote and sang “Apple Pie” with Michel Berger, and performed similar roles on Ralph MacDonald’s “In the Name of Love.” Watching You Watching Me finally appeared in 1985. Commercially it slightly outperformed ’Bout Love, yet it was assembled from sessions spanning 1981 to release, an interval during which drum machines and synthesizers had become ubiquitous in contemporary R&B. Few veteran artists—among them the Isley Brothers—navigated the shift seamlessly.

One such electronic reinterpretation ultimately secured Withers a third Grammy. Club Nouveau’s version of “Lean on Me” topped the pop chart in 1987 and earned the group a Best Rhythm & Blues Performance nomination, while Withers, credited solely as songwriter, received the Best Rhythm & Blues Song nod. The accolade underscored the countless reinterpretations his catalog—encompassing both major hits and deeper cuts such as “Let Me in Your Life” and “Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?”—had inspired. Withers nevertheless remained detached from the industry, limiting later appearances to a handful of recordings by artists including Marcus Miller and Jimmy Buffett through the mid-2000s. He entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and participated in the 2009 documentary Still Bill. In 2015, amid ongoing covers and samples across genres, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He succumbed to heart complications on March 30, 2020.