BILL WITHERS
Live at Carnegie Hall
Colu2mbia/Legacy

Professor Cecelia Tichi argues (citing Professor William Ferris), in her recent book High Lonesome: The American Culture Of Country Music, for a distinction in lyrical forms between country music and its close rural cousin, the blues. Blues, according to the Tichi/Ferris model, is written in a "liquid" form, its lyrics fluid from song to song, and not necessarily related stanza to stanza within a song. Country songs, they suggest, tell stories.

Clayton Riley argues, in his notes to this charming live concert, that Bill Withers’ songs exist somewhere between country, blues and R&B. Which is a handy reminder that Withers at his best was one of the finest, if least appreciated, songwriters of the ’70s.

Born July 4, 1938, in Slab Fork, West Virginia, Withers (like, say, Harlan Howard) kicked around in the real world for some years before finding his way as a songwriter. He spent nine years in the Navy and had a series of jobs that by legend including installing toilets in Boeing airplanes. That span of experiences and values – from small-town Appalachia to service in the Far East to working-class Los Angeles – gave his best songs a genial, honest grace that was unmistakable.

His three most successful singles – "Ain’t No Sunshine", "Lean On Me" and "Use Me" – kept Withers atop the charts in 1971—72. He never hit those heights again, and it may simply be that his songwriting trove wasn’t very deep. Even so, Live At Carnegie Hall serves as a reminder that Withers has far more to recommend him than those hits – notably "Grandma’s Hands", a loving evocation of childhood that always reminds me of Sterling North’s books. But the revelation here is the placid, gospel-flavored "I Can’t Write Left-Handed", a stunningly drawn portrait of a veteran returned from Vietnam. It is the best Bill Withers song radio didn’t make a hit of, and his most bluesy number on this set.

Because Withers was such a brief, powerful presence on AM radio, this Oct. 6, 1972, concert is also a happy reminder – a discovery, even – that he was a warm and compelling performer outside the studio. The songs are not tight recreations of the radio hits, but comfortable interactions between musicians and, sometimes, audience. Withers’ introductions are, like his songs, charming.

Withers has done little since the early ’80s, his career stalled, his muse quieted, his compulsion not to write and perform but to raise his children. Unhappily his songs seem also to have been allowed to disappear, save for Coolbone’s fine brass-rap reworking of "Use Me" last year. Ah, but they’re still out there, and they wear well.

– GRANT ALDEN