LOS ANGELES • Singer Bill Withers, who delivered timeless hits like Ain't No Sunshine with silky yet funky vocals and came to define 1970s soul, has died. He was 81.
The Grammy-winning artist behind the beloved Lean On Me succumbed to heart complications, according to his family.
He released his final album in 1985, but his hits that melded gritty southern blues with smooth R&B have endured for decades as global classics, including Lovely Day and Just The Two Of Us.
The youngest of six, Withers was born on July 4, 1938 during the final years of the Great Depression in West Virginia and grew up in a segregated coal-mining region.
He struggled with a stutter as a child and, in his teenage years, enlisted in the United States Navy and worked as an aircraft mechanic.
It was not until his mid-30s that Withers began recording music.
"I can't play the guitar or the piano, but I made a career out of writing songs on the guitar and piano," he told The New York Times in 2015. "I never learnt music. I just did it."
He moved to Los Angeles in 1967 and self-financed demos, releasing in 1971 his debut studio album Just As I Am. Its single, Ain't No Sunshine, is listed among Rolling Stone magazine's greatest songs of all time.
But the track that became an indelible smash came out on the B-side.
"The disc jockeys, God bless 'em, turned it over and that's how I got started," Withers told National Public Radio in 2015.
Rolling Stone dubbed his second album Still Bill - which included the now-standards Lean On Me and Use Me - a "stone-cold masterpiece".
Withers based Lean On Me - a wildly popular ode to friendship that soundtracked the presidential inaugurations of Mr Barack Obama and Mr Bill Clinton - on his West Virginia childhood, inspired by selfless neighbours in cash-strapped times.
He put out eight studio albums and entered de-facto retirement in 1985 after releasing his final studio work, Watching You Watching Me.
But his legacy continued to grow well after he left the industry, with many artists, including Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney, covering his songs.
Withers entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and fellow soul icon Stevie Wonder inducted him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
