Bill Withers was born in 1938 in Slab Fork, a coal-mining town in Raleigh County, West Virginia, the youngest of six children. He grew up with a stutter, and his father, a coal miner, died when Withers was barely in his teens. He enlisted in the Navy partly to get away from the culture of coal and the cycle of poverty around him, and it was during his service that he began writing songs. In a 2005 interview, he recalled a childhood soundscape that included church music, country songs and Nat King Cole.
After his discharge in 1965, Withers moved to East Los Angeles and took a job at Douglas Aircraft assembling toilets for Boeing 747s while he made demos and played clubs at night. He was in his thirties when Clarence Avant signed him to the small Sussex label. Booker T. Jones, the former Stax organist, produced his 1971 debut, Just As I Am, which featured Stephen Stills on lead guitar and included "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Grandma's Hands," the song Withers said was most shaped by his West Virginia upbringing. "Ain't No Sunshine" rose to number three on the pop chart and won a 1972 Grammy for Best Rhythm and Blues Song.
Still Bill followed with his number one hit "Lean on Me," whose simple piano intro reminded him of the hymns he had heard growing up and whose lyrics recalled his coal-camp beginnings, along with "Use Me," his third million-seller. He also wrote and produced songs for Gladys Knight and the Pips during that stretch. Later, on CBS, his collaboration with saxophonist Grover Washington Jr., "Just the Two of Us," won a 1981 Grammy.
Younger artists kept his songs in circulation for decades. In 1987, Club Nouveau carried "Lean on Me" back to number one, earning Withers his third Grammy as a songwriter. Kanye West, Will Smith and Tupac Shakur built hits on his samples, and Paul McCartney and Sting were among those who recorded "Ain't No Sunshine." Withers entered the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, with nine Grammy nominations to his credit. He died in 2020.
