Bill Withers stepped into a recording studio for the very first time at the age of 32, and two years later, he'd written and recorded one of the most beloved pop songs of the modern era: "Lean On Me," which began its first stay at #1 on the pop charts on this day in 1972.
Bill Withers was born in 1938
in the coal-mining company town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, where he
left school at age 13 to help support his family following the death of his
father. The Navy took Withers out into the wider world at the age of 17, and he
settled in California
following his discharge nine years later. At age 29, he set his mind to
pursuing a career in music, but he hedged his bets with full-time factory jobs
in various Southern California defense plants. It took three years for anyone
to show an interest in him, but in 1970, Sussex Records signed Bill Withers and
paired him with producer Booker T. Jones of Booker T. and the MG's fame. While
Withers continued to work in an aircraft factory assembling toilet seats, his
1971 debut album, Just As I Am, became a major critical success,
yielding the Grammy Award-winning hit single "Ain't No Sunshine" and
the minor R&B classic "Grandma's Hands."
Withers was still a full-time
factory worker when he wrote the song whose success would finally convince him
to give up his day job. "For a long time I didn't really accept my new
career," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1975. "It was like I
was on vacation from the factory and at some point I would have to take my tool
box and go back to work." Withers' "Lean On Me" became a
simultaneous #1 hit on the Billboard pop and R&B charts on this
day in 1972, and it returned to the #1 spot on the pop charts in March 1987 in
a hip-hop inflected remake by Club Nouveau. It has also been covered by artists
as diverse as Michael Bolton (1994), Anne Murray (1999) and Limp Bizkit
(2005). (from This Day
in History)
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