JUST PLAIN BILL?

JUST AS I AM by Bill Withers (Sussex, 1971)

Bill Withers was uncategorizable. Was he a soul artist? A folk musician? A blues singer? He certainly was no pop star. He picked a nylon string guitar, for God’s sakes! But, even so, he was one of the most covered songwriters who ever plied the craft. His appeal was universal. There hasn’t been any aspiring singer, of any genre, who hasn’t tried to put over Lean on Me or Ain’t No Sunshine. 

Bill belonged to all of us. Just As I Am was Bill’s debut album, produced by one of the premier soul artists, Booker T Jones, but in it he covers folk avatar Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’, and Paul McCartney’s Let it Be.  Listen to Grandma’s Hands and you can hear the guitar of rock icon Steven Stills. The MG’s Duck Dunn plays some of the bass parts, but so does Chris Etheridge of The Flying Burrito Brothers.

Withers narrates part of his story himself in the cut Do it Good. The son of a miner from Slab Fork, West Virginia, Bill worked as a machinist for Douglas Aircraft, IBM, and Ford - all the while sending out demo tapes until Clarence Avant signed him to Sussex, where he hit it with Ain’t No Sunshine at the age of 32 - way over the hill by pop star standards. He’s pictured on the label holding his lunch pail, dressed in a t shirt and jeans - and when he first hit pay dirt, he refused to quit his job, saying that the music business was “fickle”. Is it ever! The common touch was always part of Bill’s magic. And, of course, an uncanny talent and instinct, not to mention a warm baritone that poured like honey out of America’s car radios.

When he was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 he was characteristically understated when he said: “I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.” Neither do we.