Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Withers
Artists’
Stories
C hoosing
to make music
Look at Bill Withers in the YouTube videos, sitting at a piano or playing guitar on
a stage, handsome and relaxed in a Hawaiian shirt or a turtleneck, as his band
plays around him.
Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain. We all have sorrow, he sings. But if we
are wise, we know that there is always tomorrow.
He is singing Lean on Me, one of his most famous songs.
Just call on me, brother, when you need a hand. We all need somebody to lean on.
In the video, he is Mister Cool. But when Bill Withers was growing up in a little coal
town in Raleigh County, West Virginia, he was not Mister Cool. “I stuttered badly.
All the girls were taller than me. I had asthma.”
“Some people are born cool,” he said. “I was not.”
He stuttered till he was 28 years old. “I used to avoid the phone and any situation
where you had to talk. People would laugh when I stuttered. They’d get up in my
face and say ‘Spit it out! Just spit it out!’ They’d try all kinds of folky cures on me,
like hitting you in the face with a dishrag.”
Nobody, back then, would have predicted Bill Withers would grow up to be a fa-
mous singer and songwriter. Now he is a musical legend. He has sold millions of
records. Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, The Temp-
tations, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Sting, Kenny Rogers – many of the most
famous musicians of his time – have recorded songs he wrote.
His songs have been nominated for nine Grammys. He won three. People all
around the world sing Lean on Me and his other songs.
How did he do that?
Hang in there
Bill Withers has two grown children now. His name and music are internation-
ally known. When he thinks back to his early life in Slab Fork, to his stuttering
and asthma, his dad’s death and the money problems his family had, it looks like
a long road.
He is part of the national National Songwriters Hall of Fame and, in 2007, he be-
came one of the first class of inductees in the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.
“My teachers never would have predicted I would succeed at anything. One of
them called me a handicap.
“So my advice to kids is just to hang in there and try to like yourself. Sometimes
it might seem to you like you’re the only person who sees the value that you
might have. But things change.
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“It’s important for kids to know that, no matter what your circumstance is right
now, if you work on yourself every day and try to hold on and learn what you
can, you might not only surprise some other people, you might surprise yourself.
“When you’re young, everybody wants to be happening right now. But some
people’s value doesn’t show up early in their life. They don’t bloom till later.
“When you’re 9 or 15 years old, you can’t judge what your life is going to be
down the road. You just keep plugging away and plugging away. You get as good
as you can get at what you love. And eventually, you’ll find out who you are.
“And then the funny thing is, after you find out who you are, then adulthood
sets in, and some other stuff enters into your life, and then you try to figure out
all over again who you are.” Bill Withers laughed when he said that. “That’s
what I’m doing right now,” he said, “figuring out who I am now.
“I’m a senior citizen now, and that’s OK. I’m OK with my gray hair. I can tell you
who I was. Just don’t ask me who I am now. Isn’t that funny?”
Story by Kate Long. Sources: Interviews with Kate Long, West Virginia Public
Broadcasting interview, Still Bill, www.billwithersmusic.com, Bill Withers com-
ments at Rhythm and Blues Pioneers convention.