304. Bill Withers, "Just As I Am"

 

I got to the third track on this album, "Grandma's Hands," and this was literally me:

The intro is the sample that's the backbeat of "No Diggity"!  So that's where it came from!  But far from being just used for parts in another song, "Grandma's Hands" is a great song in its own right, an easygoing folk-soul ramble about the singer's grandma, naturally, a beautifully written and sung tribute.  

This whole album is great!  Of course there are canonical songs like "Ain't No Sunshine," but there are also songs like "Sweet Wanomi," which just feels like a song you know by heart, even if you've never heard it before, like I hadn't.  This was Withers' debut album, and it shows that he arrived as a fully mature songwriter, absolutely sure of himself and the unique blend of soul and rock and jazz and blues and folk that he was fashioning.  As would be expected at the time this album was made, there are a couple of more-or-less contemporary covers, in this case "Everybody's Talkin'," which became famous when Harry Nilsson recorded it for the "Midnight Cowboy" soundtrack, and "Let It Be."  Withers definitely puts his own spin on both, but the originals on this record vastly outshine the covers.

The album was produced by Booker T. Jones, so of course it sounds amazing.  With guitar by one Stephen Stills, believe it or not.  

There is quite a finish to this record.  The last song, "Better Off Dead," is the tortured lament of an alcoholic who runs his family off because he can't stop drinking and decides the only way to end it, as the title suggests, is suicide.  It ends abruptly with the sound of a gunshot, which is shocking but somehow appropriate.  What a great record.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.