Still Bill

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Withers’ calm, self-assured voice hovers above it all, doubling as a warm blanket that adds comfort and grace to lyrics steeped in maturity, perspective, and compassion. Miller added that Still Bill exemplified Withers' musical daring, having fused soul, blues, and "muscular funk" into a sound that finds "form between the lines … bound by the heated muscle of its rhythms and the satin berth of its softer moments".

By the time the film ends, you feel as if you've walked beside the man, seen and felt everything that ever really meant something to him. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).He also knows that younger men may eagerly sniffing around his territory – Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?

Some time ago, Deep Discount had a blowout on the European only Bill Withers - The Complete Sussex and Columbia Albums box. Another good one from Bill, recorded and produced with his band and with more of an emphasis on funk and soul this time round. And there are some good tracks here (I quite like Withers delving into funk), along with some pretty standard soul music. Side A is crammed full of great material and hit songs like the clarinet driven 'use me' and the gospel pop classic 'lean on me'.It also features some of Withers' most popular songs, including the hit singles " Lean on Me" and " Use Me". I find that it has all of the signatures of a typical modern MoFi pressing, the bass is definitely enhanced over what you are going to hear on the original pressings. I did a comparison to USE ME and LEAN ON ME on the Greatest Hits from Mofi and those two tracks are much more dynamic with more bass and really just sound warmer and more appealing to me on the Greatest Hits album. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. That grounding forever separates Withers from other contemporary soul greats – and stamps Still Bill with a conversational nature and egoless approachability.

The soul-gospel hymn Lean on Me was inspired by the friendships Withers forged while working at the aircraft factory.It seems ever more poignant as the world spins off its axis – personal politics and sincerity and simple friendship are the essence of life, not the empty words of those in power.

Then there's the quality of the songwriting, which is as assured on the grooving "Lonely Town, Lonely Street" as it is on the suspicious, paranoid "Who Is He (And What Is He to You)? What attracted me more than the richer sound palette here, though, is his words: dialectic, poetic, but also simple. Looking back on “Lean on Me” years later, Withers said it seemed like “something that was there before I got here” – the kind of song that could be 100 or 10 years old, or one we encounter anew 10 years into the future. His proclivity for authenticity extends to the record’s other big hit: the sexual, funk-laden “Use Me,” which reached No. He sings of being a willing partner in a bad relationship on Use Me ("If it feels this good getting used / Keep on using me ‘til you use me up").Still Bill is an intimate portrait of soul legend Bill Withers, best known for his classics Ain't No Sunshine, Lean on Me, Lovely Day, Grandma's Hands and Just the Two of Us.