May 142012
I’m a pretty big fan of Bill Withers. Live At Carnegie Hall belongs on any Top 10 list of albums.
I ran across this quote in the September 2011 issue of the UK magazine The Word. Regarding Withers, David Hepworth writes “Withers is an exceptional artist. No obvious influences and no musical descendants either.”
I read that line and immediately thought it outrageous but then couldn’t come up with any obvious influence or any musical descendants either.
Can you?
Or can you think of another artist who meets those criteria?
Addendum: Make that Top Ten List Of “Live” Albums!
Would it be weird to say that some of his stuff reminds me of Nina Simone?
Not a descendant or an influence, but I would say that Chicago singer-songwriter Terry Callier, who is better known in the UK than the US, was doing something not too far off from Withers’ style. Also his first album was produced by Booker T Jones, and after that he toured and recorded with the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, so it’s not like his music did not have a contemporary context. I think maybe by the time he hit in the early 70s his coffeehouse soul sound was already outdated in a post-Sly and Funkadelicized black music scene. In the later 70s and early 80s Withers collaborated with Grover Washington and the Crusaders. I’ve never heard those albums, but it makes sense that he would evolve towards the smooth jazz scene.
What’s really tough in this challenge is finding an artist who came into the world seemingly without obvious influences yet who also then failed to influence anyone else. Kate Bush, for instance, didn’t sound like anyone else when she came out, but then she spawned Tori Amos and probably 50 other followers.
I see what you mean about Withers, whose music I don’t know beyond his 4 or 5 hits. His music seemed to be all about his voice, with even his rhythms suited to follow his voice. Weird.
Kate Bush is a good example from the no antecedent point of view but she was a precedent for many as you stay.
So, let’s restrict it – who came on the scene full blown from the mind of Zeus?
More like the mind of Zardoz than Zeus, but how about The Shaggs?
I’d have thought they definitely qualify on neither pre- nor antecendent grounds!
Now that I think about it, does Happiness Stan’s beloved The Fall almost qualify as having sprung from the mind of Zeus? I know their music is simple enough to sometimes sounds like some kind of basic garage-punk, but the bulk of their material seems tailored specifically to Mark E. Smith’s weird vocal tic, the way he trails off every line with an “-ahhhh.”
This is in no way meant to sound disparaging, but I’ve always lumped Bill Withers in with the great body of soul singers who I’ve heard a couple of songs by and liked enough to think that one day I’ll investigate the rest of their music. I like the way his voice sort of rolls along slightly behind the music as though he’s making it up as he’s going along, I can see the Nina Simone reference, I’m also getting slight Johnny Mathis and Barry White vibes.
It’s a damned tricky starting point, it’s almost inevitable that as soon as someone makes even a tiny amount of money from an original sounding musical idea that somebody else will be along to copy it.
I’m thinking that there must be loads of stuff that fits the bill in fun-loving Johnny Plee’s record collection – he certainly played a lot of wilfully obscure and uncommercial stuff that didn’t sound like anything before or since, and the majority of it was never heard again.
He would regularly play records at the wrong speed, and would often stop them after a minute or so to try them at a different speed, only to change his mind again and put them back on at the speed he’d been playing them at in the first place.
I thought about the Fall, but thought that the music owes enough to Beefheart, Can and Sabbath to disqualify them, once you get past his voice.
The question is whether unique rock voices count? If so that would open the floodgates to all manner of people who either can’t or couldn’t sing.
I do think that MES deserves some sort of recognition for making a career out of not being able to sing for well over thirty years, while producing consistently entertaining and often surprising music.
Terry Callier was the first person that sprang to mind for me as well Big Steve, and his debut album came out three years before Bill Withers’ did. That’s a long enough gestation time for Withers to have been influenced by it. David Hepworth was remiss in his research efforts!