Bill Withers

From West Virginia to Los Angeles

William Harrison Withers Jr. was born on July 4, 1938 in Slab Fork, West Virginia, the youngest of six children, and was raised in Beckley. He enlisted in the US Navy at 17, served nine years, left in 1965 and moved to Los Angeles in 1967. He worked as a mechanical assembler at Douglas Aircraft, IBM and Ford while recording demos.

Just As I Am (Sussex, May 1, 1971) was produced and arranged by Booker T. Jones and recorded at Sunset Sound and Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood. Withers said Jones was actually absolutely perfect for me and not obnoxious. The sparse sound came partly from a shortage of money: the label ran out of funds, the band was removed from the studio after two sessions, and Withers waited six months for the rest to be recorded. The cover photograph by Norbert Jobst shows him beside a brick building, supposedly the factory where he worked installing airplane toilets at the time.

The hits

"Ain't No Sunshine" was first placed on a B-side and went gold in September 1971. Still Bill (May 1, 1972, recorded at the Record Plant in Los Angeles) included "Lean on Me", which was number one on the week of July 8, 1972, and "Use Me". He recorded Live at Carnegie Hall on October 6, 1972, released on April 21, 1973 as a double LP; Rolling Stone ranked it 27th on its 2015 list of the 50 greatest live albums. He played the Zaire 74 festival in Kinshasa in September 1974, filmed for Soul Power.

Later albums include +'Justments (1974), then Making Music (1975) on Columbia, Naked & Warm (1976), Menagerie (1977), which has "Lovely Day", 'Bout Love (1979) and Watching You, Watching Me (1985). "Just the Two of Us" (1981) was with Grover Washington Jr. He stopped recording and performing after 1985, citing burnout and conflict with Columbia executives. He died in Los Angeles on March 30, 2020, aged 81.

Recognition

He went into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, inducted by Stevie Wonder. He won three Grammys from nine nominations, "Ain't No Sunshine" was added to the National Recording Registry in 2024, and a bronze statue was unveiled in Beckley on March 28, 2025. The documentary Still Bill (2009) by Damani Baker and Alex Vlack followed him. Kendrick Lamar, Tupac Shakur and Aaliyah are among those who have sampled or covered his songs.