Bill Withers - Live At Carnegie Hall

Bill Withers’ “Live at Carnegie Hall” album was recorded in October of 1972. Everytime I listen to it, I feel as if I was there. I can see all the black girls with big afro’s and the black men with huge collars around me. It’s like the audience of a Richard Pryor stand up, just without Withers cracking off jokes about white folk.

The album opens with an extended version of the song that got me into Withers, “Use Me”. I used to have this old compilation of 70’s funk and soul stuff. For the most part, it was fairly poor, but hidden away amongst the layers of flares and platforms, was Bill Withers’ “Use Me”.

I sat up on my bed and rushed to grab the CD case about 30 seconds in, to find out what it was, I knew I’d found something straight away.

Withers was born in Slab Fork, West Virginia. I did a search for Slab Fork to see if my suspicions about the town were true. A consensus found that Slab Fork had a population of 202, the same 2000 consensus showed that 199 of the residents were white, two were mixed race and one Alaskan.

I can just imagine Slab Fork like, everyone knows everyone, everyone wears them lumberjack shirts, the two “mixed race” folk will be handymen. The town will have three shops, a general store, a locksmith and a hardware store. I reckon the hardware store will be run by Ted, a 70 year old fat man with white hair, selling nuts and bolts to the 202 residents and somehow managing to use his nuts and bolts sales to finance a radical white supremacist group from behind his counter, of which only he and his cousin are members.

I wish Bill Withers was my Granda, in between songs he tells his little stories, about how he loved his Grandma before the song “Grandma’s Hands”, about relationships before “Let Me In Your Life”, in fact that bit still puts a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye to this day, even though I’ve heard it a million times.

He’s just a proper bloke, basically. He worked in a hardware store, probably not dissimilar to Ted’s, packing people nuts and bolts into brown paper bags, he was in the Navy, he worked on an assembly line for Ford. He’s a working class hero that would’ve been held in even higher regard had he been white, I truly believe that.

His work has been plundered left, right and centre. From people covering songs like “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean On Me”, to samples being lifted from “Grandma’s Hands” by Blackstreet, and “I Can’t Write Left Handed” by Fatboy Slim, to alternate versions of “Just The Two Of Us” in Austin Powers and “Who Is He And What Is He To You” on Tarantino soundtracks.

This album completely showcases his everyman charm. There is no barrier at all between him, his band and the audience. It’s all about interaction, showmanship and storytelling. His songwriting is beautiful and his vocals are showcased with him holding the same note of “she’s gone” on “Hope She’ll Be Happier” for an impressive 14 seconds, you just want to clap at the end of it, along with the audience.

Towards the end, when the medley of “Harlem/Cold Baloney” starts, it’s just one big party. I can just see everyone on their feet, dancing about and smiling. In parts, the album could almost be one of those churches in America with all the big gospel, soulful songs, people clapping and singing as loud as they can, it’s amazing.

He’ll be 69 years old this year, a few years back he told Courtney Cox and David Arquette to fuck off, when they asked him to play their wedding, saying “I ain’t no wedding singer”. Legend.

I genuinely will cry when Bill Withers dies like. It’s not often that you find somebody in your lifetime, who is still alive and whose music means so much and says so much to you.

God bless you, Bill.

Watch this video, his patter beforehand and the drummers smile are priceless, class…………