Discharged after nine years of service, Withers relocated to San Jose, where he worked as a milkman, made aircraft parts, and eventually worked on planes. Navy, where he served as an aircraft mechanic. Withers spent his late teens and most of his twenties in the U.S. He wrote his first song at the age of four, but his talent wouldn't truly manifest for another three decades. was born in Slab Fork, West Virginia on July 4, 1938, and was raised in nearby Beckley. The son of a maid and a coal miner, William Harrison Withers, Jr. Given his flowers before his death at the age of 81, Withers was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Early to leave, Withers made his last statement with Watching You Watching Me (1985), closing a songbook that has served as a bountiful resource for artists from a multitude of stylistic persuasions. He collected more gold singles with "Lean on Me" and "Use Me," both off the similarly successful Still Bill (1972), reached the same height with Menagerie (1977), led by "Lovely Day," and was handed a second Grammy for "Just the Two of Us" (1981), his collaboration with Grover Washington, Jr. Through the next ten years, Withers continued to meld soul, gospel, folk, and funk with rare finesse. Late to arrive, the everyman R&B paragon had just turned 33 when "Ain't No Sunshine," the unfading ballad off Just as I Am (1971), made him a sudden and unlikely success story, within one year an aircraft mechanic-turned-million-selling, Grammy-winning artist. Even smaller in number are the songwriters who have shared the West Virginian's natural ability to articulate a comprehensive range of emotions and perspectives - jubilation and gratitude, jealousy, and spite - with maximal levels of conviction and concision. Few singers have possessed a baritone as rich and comforting as that of Bill Withers.
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