{"id":806013,"date":"2020-04-03T08:28:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T14:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=977929"},"modified":"2020-04-03T08:28:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T14:28:47","slug":"bill-withers-hall-of-fame-soul-singer-dead-at-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/bill-withers-hall-of-fame-soul-singer-dead-at-81\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Withers, Hall of Fame Soul Singer, Dead at 81"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bill Withers<\/a>, the soul legend who penned timeless songs like \u201cLean on Me,\u201d \u201cLovely Day\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t No Sunshine,\u201d has died from heart complications according to a statement from his family. He was 81.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are devastated by the loss of our beloved, devoted husband and father,\u201d his family said in a statement. \u201cA solitary man with a heart driven to connect to the world at large, with his poetry and music, he spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other,\u201d the family statement read. \u201cAs private a life as he lived close to intimate family and friends, his music forever belongs to the world. In this difficult time, we pray his music offers comfort and entertainment as fans hold tight to loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Withers released just eight albums before walking away from the spotlight in 1985, but he left an incredible mark on the music world and the culture at large. \u201cHe\u2019s the last African-American Everyman,\u201d Questlove told Rolling Stone in 2015. \u201cJordan\u2019s vertical jump has to be higher than everyone. Michael Jackson has to defy gravity. On the other side of the coin, we\u2019re often viewed as primitive animals. We rarely land in the middle. Bill Withers is the closest thing black people have to a Bruce Springsteen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Withers grew up in Slab Fork, West Virginia in the final years of the Great Depression. He was the youngest of six kids and struggled to fit in, largely due to his speech impediment. \u201cWhen you stutter,\u201d he told Rolling Stone,<\/em> \u201cpeople tend to disregard you.\u201d He also had to endure incredible racism in the Jim Crow south. \u201cOne of the first things I learned, when I was around four,\u201d he said, \u201cwas that if you make a mistake and go into a white women\u2019s bathroom, they\u2019re going to kill your father.\u201d<\/p>\n

He joined the Navy after high school and worked as a milkman in Santa Clara County, California after he left the service. He later worked at an aircraft parts factory. Music played a very small role in his life until he visited a nightclub in Oakland where Lou Rawls was booked to perform. \u201cHe was late, and the manager was pacing back and forth,\u201d Withers said. \u201cI remember him saying, \u2018I\u2019m paying this guy $2,000 a week and he can\u2019t show up on time.\u2019 I was making $3 an hour, looking for friendly women, but nobody found me interesting. Then Rawls walked in, and all these women are talking to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was all it took. He soon bought a cheap guitar at a pawn shop, taught himself to play and began writing songs between shifts at the factory. A demo tape got into the hands of Clarence Avant, an executive at Sussex records. And before Withers knew it, he was called into the studio to record an album with producer Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald \u201cDuck\u201d Dunn, Stephen Stills on guitar. One of the first songs they cut, \u201cAin\u2019t No Sunshine,\u201d was a tale of lost love that Withers wrote after watching 1962 Jack Lemmon-Lee Remick movie Days of Wine and Roses <\/em>on television<\/p>\n

The album they recorded at that session, 1971\u2019s Just As I Am<\/em>, became an enormous hit and turned Withers into a star overnight. He followed it up with 1972\u2019s Just As I Am<\/em>. That was an even bigger sensation thanks to leadoff single \u201cLean on Me.\u201d Amazingly, he wrote the song shortly after learning to play the piano. His didn\u2019t think much of it, but his label disagreed and it became a worldwide smash.<\/p>\n

Looking back decades later, Withers was still amazed all of this happened to him at a relatively late age in his life. \u201cImagine 40,000 people at a stadium watching a football game,\u201d he told Rolling Stone in 2015. \u201cAbout 10,000 of them think they can play quarterback. Three of them probably could. I guess I was one of those three.\u201d<\/p>\n

But fame didn\u2019t agree with him. He hated life on the road, his marriage to TV star Denise Nicholas became fodder for the tabloids and his distrust of businessmen made him unwilling to work with a manager. \u201cEarly on, I had a manager for a couple of months, and it felt like getting a gasoline enema,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody had my interest at heart. I felt like a pawn. I like being my own man.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Sussex records went bankrupt in 1975, he moved over to Columbia Records. It only added to his misery. \u201cI met my A&R guy, and the first thing he said to me was, \u2018I don\u2019t like your music or any black music, period,\u2019\u2009\u201d Withers said.  \u201cI am proud of myself because I did not hit him. I met another executive who was looking at a photo of the Four Tops in a magazine. He actually said to me, \u2018Look at these ugly niggers.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

He recorded five records for Columbia and scored radio hits with \u201cLovely Day\u201d and \u201cJust The Two of Us,\u201d but his heart was no longer in the work. After the release of 1985\u2019s Watching You Watching Me<\/em>, he had enough and decided to retire. Fortunately, wise real estate investments and royalties from his early work meant that money wasn\u2019t a problem. As the decades passed by, many people forget he was even alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne Sunday morning I was at Roscoe\u2019s Chicken and Waffles,\u201d he told Rolling Stone. \u201cThese church ladies were sitting in the booth next to mine. They were talking about this Bill Withers song they sang in church that morning. I got up on my elbow, leaned into their booth and said, \u2018Ladies, it\u2019s odd you should mention that because I\u2019m Bill Withers.\u2019 This lady said, \u2018You ain\u2019t no Bill Withers. You\u2019re too light-skinned to be Bill Withers!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2015, he made a rare public appearance when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. \u201cI still have to process this,\u201d he said shortly after learning the news. \u201cYou know that Billy Joel line, \u2018Hot funk, cool punk, even if it\u2019s old junk, it\u2019s still rock & roll to me?\u2019 I\u2019m happy to represent the old junk category.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Withers, the soul legend who penned timeless songs like \u201cLean on Me,\u201d \u201cLovely Day\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t No Sunshine,\u201d has died from heart complications according to a statement from his family. He was 81. \u201cWe are devastated by the loss of our beloved, devoted husband and father,\u201d his family said in a statement. \u201cA solitary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 08:53:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}