The aircraft mechanic who sang about sunshine

Bill Withers was still putting together parts for a living when his first hit arrived. Born in 1938 in the coal-mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, he was the youngest of six children, a boy with a stutter who later said he never quite fitted in. His father, a miner, died when Bill was thirteen.

At seventeen he joined the US Navy and stayed nine years, and it was there that singing and songwriting began to pull at him. He moved to Los Angeles in 1967 and took assembly jobs at Douglas Aircraft, IBM and Ford, paying for his own demo tapes and playing clubs at night. When “Ain't No Sunshine” took off in 1971, he declined to quit his job, convinced that the music business was a fickle one.

The break came when Clarence Avant of Sussex Records heard a demo and paired him with Booker T. Jones, who produced the debut album Just As I Am. Funding was tight, so it was recorded in three sessions. The cover shows Withers at work at Weber Aircraft, lunch box in hand. In October 1971 two letters arrived on the same day: his old employer offering the mechanic's job back at $3.50 an hour, and The Tonight Show inviting him to sing on NBC. The song won a Grammy for Best R&B Song and passed a million copies.

“Lean on Me” reached number one in July 1972, and “Use Me” followed as another million-seller. His songs “Grandma's Hands”, “Harlem” and “Who Is He (and What Is He To You)” show the range behind the hits; “Harlem” even began life as an earlier single, “Three Nights and a Morning”, which went unnoticed in 1967 before he reworked it.

Withers later stopped performing and recording in the mid-1980s, citing burnout and conflicts with record executives. He left behind “Ain't No Sunshine” and “Lean on Me”, both in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.