B4 SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020 LATIMES.COM
S
inger-songwriter Bill
Withers, who came
to music late and left
it early but created
enduring hits such
as “Ain’t No Sunshine,”
“Lean on Me” and “Just the
Two of Us,” died in Los Ange-
les from heart complications
March 30, according to his
family. He was 81.
“We are devastated by
the loss of our beloved, de-
voted husband and father. A
solitary man with a heart
driven to connect to the
world at large, with his po-
etry and music, he spoke
honestly to people and con-
nected them to each other,”
the family statement read.
“As private a life as he lived
close to intimate family and
friends, his music forever be-
longs to the world. In this dif-
ficult time, we pray his music
offers comfort and enter-
tainment as fans hold tight
to loved ones.”
Withers was born July 4,
1938 (“that makes me very
American,” he joked), in the
coal-mining town of Slab
Fork, W.Va., and always
made a point of emphasizing
his working-class origins
and sympathies. A stutter-
ing, socially awkward teen-
ager, he joined the Navy after
high school, becoming an
aircraft mechanic.
After nine years in the
military, he moved to Cali-
fornia and got interested in
music as a way to meet wom-
en, so he bought his first gui-
tar and learned to play it. His
first single, “Three Nights
and a Morning,” came out in
1967 and made no commer-
cial impact at all. (Later, he
would rerecord it as
“Harlem.”)
In 1971, the independent
record label Sussex released
Withers’ debut album, “Just
As I Am,” on which he was
backed by Stephen Stills
and members of Booker T. &
the M.G.’s. The cover photo-
graph showed Withers in
jeans and T-shirt, leaning
against the Weber Aircraft
factory where he worked at
the time, holding his lunch-
box; with characteristic pru-
dence, he didn’t give up his
job at the factory until it laid
him off shortly before the al-
bum appeared.
A folk-soul landmark,
“Just As I Am” was built
around Withers’ calm, sup-
ple baritone voice and
acoustic guitar. “Ain’t No
Sunshine,” his first hit, was a
quiet thunderbolt: a plain-
spoken and devastating love
song, barely two minutes
long, with a break in which
Withers simply sang “I
know” 26 times in a row over
Al Jackson Jr.’s skeletal
drums. It became an instantstandard. So did its follow-
up, “Grandma’s Hands,” a
sentimental memory with
genuine, sharp pain, and the
cadences of black churches
and the gospel songs he’d
heard there as a child be-
neath its surface.
As a songwriter, Withers
built on the traditions of
Thomas Dorsey, Hank
Williams and Irving Berlin,
distilling overwhelming
emotions to thoughtful,
aphoristic phrases. “To me,”
he told Songfacts in 2004,
“the biggest challenge in the
world is to take anything
that’s complicated and
make it simple so it can be
understood by the masses....
I’m a stickler for saying
something the simplest pos-sible way with some el-
ements of poetry. Because
simple is memorable.”
As his musical career was
taking off, Withers bought a
Wurlitzer electric piano — he
hadn’t really played that be-
fore, either — and promptly
came up with the rising-and-
falling melody at the center
of “Lean on Me,” which
topped both the pop and
R&B charts in 1972. The al-
bum on which it appeared,
“Still Bill,” also produced the
slinky funk hit “Use Me,” and
a triumphant October 1972
Carnegie Hall concert was
released as a live album.
After that, though, With-
ers’ career and personal life
grew more turbulent. His
1973 marriage to “Room 222”actress Denise Nicholas
quickly collapsed; they were
divorced the next year, and
the bitter emotional fallout
from the breakup under-
scored his messy 1974 album
“+‘Justments.” Sussex Re-
cords folded in 1975, and
Withers moved to the larger
label Columbia, whose exe-
cutives’ ideas about what he
should be recording clashed
with his own.
His songwriting left the
raw emotion of his earlier
work behind, and although
the slick, good-mood pop he
was making had its mo-
ments — 1977’s “Lovely Day”
was a substantial hit — his
heart clearly wasn’t in it
most of the time, which was
a problem for an artist whohad built his reputation on
direct sincerity.
Withers made no albums
in the seven years after 1978’s
“ ’Bout Love,” although he
did have one of his biggest
hits in 1981: “Just the Two of
Us,” a collaboration with
smooth jazz saxophonist
Grover Washington Jr. After
1985’s forgettable “Watching
You Watching Me” album, he
was done. He’d become frus-
trated by the music busi-
ness,and because he’d come
to it relatively late, it wasn’t
the only path he could imag-
ine for himself. As he later
told Rolling Stone, “There’s
no rule that says your life has
to be one thing.”
So he moved on. Withers
stepped out of the public
eye, in a way that seemed un-
thinkable for a pop star of his
caliber. The music business
wasn’t entirely done with
Withers, though. He won a
1988 Grammy Award for the
16-year-old “Lean on Me,”
whose cover by Club Nou-
veau had topped the charts;
his old recordings were sam-
pled by artists such as
Blackstreet (“No Diggity”),
Eminem (“ ’97 Bonnie and
Clyde”) and Kendrick
Lamar (“Sing About Me, I’m
Dying of Thirst”).
Meanwhile, Withers went
his own way, investing in real
estate and managing his
songwriting catalog. He
didn’t eschew publicity alto-
gether — he was the subject
of a 2009 documentary, “Still
Bill,” and gave a witty speech
when he was inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 2015. But aside from
afew brief guest appear-
ances on friends’ records
and a cover of “(You’ve Been
Quite a Doll) Raggedy Ann”
on a Little Jimmy Dickens
tribute album in 2017, he re-
leased no new music in the
last 35 years of his life.
“A very famous minister
actually called me to find out
whether I was dead or not,”
Withers told Rolling Stone in- “I said to him, ‘Let me
check.’ ”
Withers is survived by his
second wife, Marcia, and
their children, Todd and
Kori.
Wolk is a special
correspondent.B ILL WITHERS, 1938 - 2020
Singer’s biggest hit was ‘Lean on Me’
Gilles PetardRedferns
SHORT CAREER, BIG HITS
Although singer-songwriter Bill Withers came to music late and left it early, he left a memorable mark with
popular pop and R&B tunes, including “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean on Me” and “Just the Two of Us.”The artist, who left
limelight in 1985, made
songs full of emotion
and a feel-good vibe.
By Douglas Wolk
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