He’s obviously a rock and roll hall of fame inductee but it took until 2015.

He’s not really mentioned with the Marvin Gayes and Al Greens of soul.

Do you see his placement as underrated or is he properly praised?

In my opinion...it doesn’t get much better than Bill at his best.

name your price....i'd pay PLENTY for a live Bill Withers show RIGHT NOW if he were to decide he wanted to do a show/tour.

very unlikely that'd ever happen though as far as i know. Apparently thats just not where he's at these days, last i heard. And honestly, thats another reason i dig him....he's definitely his own man, and i totally respect that.

he's got that sneak up on ya sincerity that can't be faked...in his music and in how he seems to live his life.

yeah, imo he's underrated.




�
have you listened to
her stuff?
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http://www.meshell.com/site/
http://www.freemyheart.com


RIP David Williams:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Williams_(guitarist)

Lol

He's my favorite songwriter. I feel very honored to have met him and shook his hand at a screening of Still Bill. The real heads know though. It's interesting because while I think he's amazing, he doesn't have one album that's a straight classic. It's a bunch of amazing songs spread out over several albums.

Pound for pound though, I choose him over the great Stevie Wonder as a songwriter. At least when it comes to conveying emotion.

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But he's one of the few people of that generation that really speaks to my.. well... soul.

Wish 15 was able to coax him off the ledge and make that album they were half talking about maybe six or seven years ago, but he's got a great catalog regardless.

<--- Me when my head hits the pillow

Deservedly so, considering all the sensitive man loves his woman ballads that he wrote and performed, folks couldn't get with him being a monster off stage, and he lost his audience.

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One Hundred.

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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>Deservedly so, considering all the sensitive man loves his
>woman ballads that he wrote and performed, folks couldn't get
>with him being a monster off stage, and he lost his audience.

You've fabricated a narrative here, because his biggest hit at the time was "Lean On Me" because he was tired of love songs.

Here's the real story (which you could have found if you didn't want to apply me-too era climate to the 70's):

He and Denise Nicholas split in 1973. He wrote a biographical album (Justments) in 1974.
His record company, Sussex, went bankrupt in 1975 (this was after Lean On Me and Ain't No Sunshine). He was unhappy with the new label, Columbia.

“I met my A&R guy, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I don’t like your music or any black music, period,’ ” says Withers. “I 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, ‘Look at these ugly niggers.’ ”
At Sussex, he had complete creative control over his music, but at Columbia he found himself in the middle of a large corporation that was second-guessing his moves. As he relives this part of his past, he gets teary. “There were no black executives,” he says. “They’d say shit to me like, ‘Why are there no horns on the song?’ ‘Why is this intro so long?’ . . . This one guy at Columbia, Mickey Eichner, was a huge pain in the ass,” he adds. “He told me to cover Elvis Presley’s ‘In the Ghetto.’ I’m a songwriter! That would be like buying a bartender a drink.” - Rolling Stone

Lovely Day came out in 1977. Just The Two of Us came out in 1980. If the people stopped fucking with him after the divorce, how did these become hits? You could have just as easily attributed the lack of success of the environment at the new label, but the "he's a woman beater!" angle was too easy, and you didn't care to find out what really happened. Allegedly, he was abusive to his wife, yet there was more going on than that... and that didn't shut peoples' careers down like that back then anyway.

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

He's moreso Folk music to me, and since not a lot of Black people are classified that way, he gets overlooked. Consider even his biggest hit and the folksy, brotherly love subject matter. A lot of his earlier music did have the R&B aesthetic of the time (likely owing to the musicians brought in to work on a Black man's album), but songs like Lean On Me and Grandma's Hands aren't imo. It's like in the 50's when anything sang by a Black person was classified as "R&B" even when it was straight up pop ("You Send Me" by Sam Cooke, for instance). You classified him with Al Green and Marvin Gaye, and it's pretty clear why he isn't classified with them. Mainly, they're vocalists... soulful vocalists. Withers isn't. His delivery is mad folksy. Al and Marvin amazed with that particular aesthetic. Bill didn't with any. He wasn't an amazing musician (he actually only started playing guitar right before he wrote his first song), he didn't wow you with vocal ability. But he wrote songs that could touch your heart and that you could relate to. Questo said it best:
“He’s the last African-American Everyman,” says Questlove. “Jordan’s vertical jump has to be higher than everyone. Michael Jackson has to defy gravity. On the other side of the coin, we’re often viewed as primitive animals. We rarely land in the middle. Bill Withers is the closest thing black people have to a Bruce Springsteen.”

Executive Clarence Avant said Withers' songs were unbelievable and **"you had to listen to the lyrics"** Avant said. That's another thing that makes him folksy. He's like Bob Dylan, but he's a Black male so he ain't elevated to God status in a white supremacist society where white people have pretty much claimed folk music... plus he didn't stick around as long (which is also owed to racist industry politics). I know most of yall are non-Black on here at this point, but Black folks understand what songs and lyrics of his speak directly to us and just how genius a lot of them were. He should be up there with Dylan, but.. racism changes things *shrugs*

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

<--- Me when my head hits the pillow

>He's moreso Folk music to me, and since not a lot of Black
>people are classified that way, he gets overlooked. Consider
>even his biggest hit and the folksy, brotherly love subject
>matter. A lot of his earlier music did have the R&B aesthetic
>of the time (likely owing to the musicians brought in to work
>on a Black man's album), but songs like Lean On Me and
>Grandma's Hands aren't imo. It's like in the 50's when
>anything sang by a Black person was classified as "R&B" even
>when it was straight up pop ("You Send Me" by Sam Cooke, for
>instance). You classified him with Al Green and Marvin Gaye,
>and it's pretty clear why he isn't classified with them.
>Mainly, they're vocalists... soulful vocalists. Withers
>isn't. His delivery is mad folksy. Al and Marvin amazed
>with that particular aesthetic. Bill didn't with any. He
>wasn't an amazing musician (he actually only started playing
>guitar right before he wrote his first song), he didn't wow
>you with vocal ability. But he wrote songs that could touch
>your heart and that you could relate to. Questo said it
>best:
>“He’s the last African-American Everyman,” says
>Questlove. “Jordan’s vertical jump has to be higher than
>everyone. Michael Jackson has to defy gravity. On the other
>side of the coin, we’re often viewed as primitive animals.
>We rarely land in the middle. Bill Withers is the closest
>thing black people have to a Bruce Springsteen.”
>
>Executive Clarence Avant said Withers' songs were unbelievable
>and **"you had to listen to the lyrics"** Avant said. That's
>another thing that makes him folksy. He's like Bob Dylan,
>but he's a Black male so he ain't elevated to God status in a
>white supremacist society where white people have pretty much
>claimed folk music... plus he didn't stick around as long
>(which is also owed to racist industry politics). I know most
>of yall are non-Black on here at this point, but Black folks
>understand what songs and lyrics of his speak directly to us
>and just how genius a lot of them were. He should be up
>there with Dylan, but.. racism changes things *shrugs*
>
>
>

Great job with this. Pretty much on point with everything you said.

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Mixcloud - www.mixcloud.com/Soultaker/

Incredible songs in his catalog.

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

>

don't be fkn evil.

gun pointed to my head, im taking "Still Bill" to that desert island over anything in al or marvin's catalog

That laaa la la, la laa and a snippet of the guitar lick. I want to say it was on a Ye mixtape before Graduation came out. Same tape had the first song I ever heard from Big Sean on it.

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

Which was a great mixtape.

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thing is with Bill Withers He could play, sing,etc.. however he was a Box Act kinda like what Roberta Flack deals with.

talent and got money tracks
and has there place, however in the grand scheme and picture not seeing the Heavy Weights of R&B Soul like that.

not underrated however taken for granted from having his tracks which have endured.

in truth his album tracks have more life than his albums

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

Miami Heat, New York Yankees,buffalo bills

I've always felt like his music was too southern, like southern soft rock meets 70's r&b ballads, which I was never into music anything on those lanes except maybe some Poco & Paul Davis.

I do like the collaboration song he did with Grover Washington Jr. "Just The Two Of Us" and I like the music to "Lovely Day", other than that, everything else he does, doesn't move me.

Is he "underrated", I'm not sure about that cause he has had hits, but so has a million others; sometimes I think we get this mindset that want to give almost every r&b/soul artist who has only had one or two hits that "underrated" tag when sometimes they really wasn't underrated just good at what they did, and had a lot of decent but not amazing tunes with some gems in between that kept our ears satisfied.

I don't think artists set out to make an album with one good song and seven to ten bad songs, they try to make an cohesive album that you can listen to from beginning to end, while hoping to have at least one hit song that will make someone purchase & be happy with the album; some did it better than others while a lot of artists sucked at it.

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"We in here talking about later career Prince records
& your fool ass is cruising around in a time machine
trying to collect props for a couple of sociopathic degenerates" - s.blak