Published on Aug 17, 1997
One thing I love about big sales at the used record stores are
the wondrous treaures someone like me can lay his greedy mitts
upon. At one such sale on Saturday, I ended up with some 60 items
for just under $12. (Unfortunately, two of the tapes turned out to
be illegal copies – fucking bootleggers…)
One of the tapes I grabbed was a collection fron ’70s soul
artist Bill Withers, who had impressed me at a young age with songs
like “Lean On Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.” How could someone go
wrong with an album like
Bill Withers’ Greatest Hits?
Easy: Withers has limited range which doesn’t carry past the few
hits he’s had. (Okay, a second way to go wrong is when this tape is
one of the pirated ones I accidentally bought.)
Withers has a whiskey-smooth delivery as heard on his two early
hits, “Lean On Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.” The last time I
remember him charting was in the early ’80s with “Just The Two Of
Us,” which leads off the album. These three songs are enough to
lead someone into believing that Withers was a master of lite-rock,
make-out soul that was the direct opposite of other
African-American musicians of the time like Stevie Wonder.
But when you start discovering some of his other work, it almost
makes you wonder how Withers managed to hit the charts three times,
much less one. Some of the songs like “Grandma’s Hands” are moving,
but nothing special, while others like “Use Me” and “Lonely Day”
just evoke no emotion from the listener. In fact, “Use Me” sounds a
little like some of the soul Wonder was producing at the time,
albeit much more controlled.
That’s not to say there is nothing else worth listening to on
Bill Withers’ Greatest Hits. “Soul Shadows,” which
apparently was also a hit for Withers (it gets mention on the front
cover), has its moments, while “Hello Like Before” is an
interesting tale of, from what I can draw from it, former lovers
who see each other socially and the lack of comfort they used to
have.
And I would rather have an album with all the songs I love
padded with shit than have to buy several albums just to get one or
two tracks. With Withers, the extra material isn’t shit, but it
does reveal possibly a lack of ambition. He obviously knew how to
hit the bullseye – “Ain’t No Sunshine” clinched that for me – but
he chooses not to. That’s interesting – and also disturbing. What
Withers could have done for soul music is left as a footnote to the
genre.
Bill Withers’ Greatest Hits has its moments which will have
you reliving the times you first heard them and what you were
feeling. But it sometimes feels like a long journey for small, but
worthy, nuggets.