Bill Withers. If you over forty, you probably got a Withers favorite lyric, or at least a saying or phrase from his catalogue that makes perfect melodic sense on the merry-go-round of your own life. If you younger than forty and don’t have a Withers diddy that touches you, by and by, once you hear his music after going through some personal life experiences, you will have a phrase, or even a whole song, that sticks with you as you get on with your getting on.

I remember Amiri Baraka telling a story to a group of us. He said when he was younger, a mentor told him he would dig so and so when he got older. According to Amiri, there are some things you can’t fully appreciate until you have some years on you. A bunch of Bill’s music is like that, requires experience to be fully appreciated.

Indeed, a healthy portion of us are likely to get misty-eyed when we listen to a song like “Hello Like Before“–as we quietly remember a certain touching someone who had caressed us over a decade before. Or when we reflect on a friend or acquaintance  we know who perfectly fits a song like “But She’s Lonely”. 

Bill Withers. He a special somebody. Unlike ninety-nine percent of us, he be the only man that I know of who has literally walked away from fame and fortune, turned his back on the narcotic of an audience of thousands applauding. Regularly resisted and refused lucrative offers to make a comeback recording. Bill Withers the performer has left the building. 

Fortunately, six or seven albums from his fifteen-year period of public performance are available, along with a couple or three videos of him in a television studio. Here is a set I dig from 1972 featuring Melvin Dunlap on bass, James Gadson on drums, Benorce Blackmon on guitar, and Ray Jackson on keyboard.

Bill Withers is an example of a gifted man who has not allowed his gift to push him to keep going long after he should have stopped. Bill was at the top of his game when he gave up being a star.

Maybe it was because he was in his thirties when he started recording. Maybe it is because he is an ornery old man what don’t give a damn about being rich or famous. He made enough to live on and so he only does what he wants to do and later for the rest of the okey-doke.

Still Bill is a magnificent documentary that captures a good bit of both the personality and the mystique of Bill Withers. And here is Stevie Wonder and John Legend inducting Bill Withers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So there it is. Bill Withers, one of the best song writers who ever lived, who had the good sense and intestinal fortitude to retire when he was on top. We should all be so blessed as to be able to  be satisfied with whomsoever we actually are without striving to be somebody we are not. We should all be  blessed not to need outside validation to make ourselves feel a complete human being.

Bill Withers–a man who stopped–is a perfect example of success. Enjoy his music, learn from his example of playing the game and not letting the game play him.