I think every artist at some point should record one of his songs on their projects. That’s how you keep it going. He deserves that. | | | | Bill Withers at the Rainbow Theatre, London, Oct. 1, 1973.
(Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “I think every artist at some point should record one of his songs on their projects. That’s how you keep it going. He deserves that.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// He started way late—he was 32 when his classic debut album came out—and ended way early. His last album, which can't even be bothered to have a Wikipedia page, came out a mere 14 years later, after which he spent the last 35 years of his life being a dad, being a good soul, being the regular guy he insisted he always had been, and expressing absolutely no regrets. He might've carried a little residual anger at the music industry, too. In between, he wrote and sang himself into the American songbook with tales of heartache, everyday struggles and nearly heroic friendship, and a self-assured storyteller's voice that made him a kind of poet laureate of black America. “BILL WITHERS is the closest thing black people have to a BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN," QUESTLOVE said in 2015. He was "the working man’s troubadour," COREY GLOVER said. "He is what BOB DYLAN wants to be." Bill Withers' death, at age 81, is an immense loss to American music, in a year of immense loss. He was not a victim, as far as we know, of the coronavirus. He was, rather, someone we had leaned on as the plague attacked the civilized world's soul. A week after he died at age 81, his songs are already outliving him. There may not be a major artist alive whose songs have taken root, and survived, as organically as his. He was a hard-working man—he had a job manufacturing toilets for airplanes when he recorded that first album—who became a hard-working artist. He was a craftsman, with a craftsman's personality, which can make it weirdly easy to overlook how big a star he was in the 1970s, and how many of his songs continue to be part of the fabric of our lives. They show up in movies and TV shows, on the radio, in quarantine windows. But there was no Bill Withers TV special, and no comeback tour. He chose a quiet, ordinary, dignified life, befitting a singer with a phenomenal and resolutely unflashy voice. If you have 75 minutes, watch ALEX VLACK and DAMANI BAKER's 2009 documentary STILL BILL, which skillfully traces his career while mostly being about where he came from and where he ended up—a musician's life as seen through the lens of his nonmusical pursuits. A musician who spent his life wanting to be judged for what he did, rather than what you thought he should do. RIP. MusicSET: "Bill Withers Was the Quiet Soul of a Nation"... Good citizens: PINK, who is recovering from Covid-19 (along with her 3-year-old son, JAMESON), has pledged $500,000 each to emergency funds in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. MADONNA donates $1 million to Gates Philanthropy Partners' search for a treatment or cure. ELTON JOHN launches a $1 million emergency fund. JOHN MAYER donates money for ventilators for Livingston HealthCare in Livingston, Mont. JAY-Z and MEEK MILL's Reform Alliance sends 100,000 surgical masks to prisons around the U.S. CARDI B donates 20,000 meal supplements to New York area hospitals... DUFFY has posted a long, chilling essay about the rape/kidnapping that led to her decade-long absence from music. A difficult, important read... RIP VAUGHAN MASON, ALEX HARVEY, NEIL LASHER, GARY A. JENKINS, LUIS EDUARDO AUTE, PATRICK GIBSON, PAUL QUIRK. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | | | | | clapped in church on sunday morning | |  | REDEF | | In a recording career that lasted a mere 14 years, Bill Withers wrote himself into the American songbook with tales of heartache, struggle and nearly heroic friendship—and a storyteller's voice that made him a kind of poet laureate of black America. | | | |  | Now This | | Analysis: The kings of K-pop are dominating global pop charts, but American radio still shows them no love. | | | |  | BuzzFeed News | | "It’s very scary to see some of these people go. Because that’s our last connection to that. To the beginnings of our music." | | | |  | Chicago Tribune | | Howard Reich speaks with some of Chicago's legendary elder musicians -- in their 80s and 90s -- who now aren't allowed to do the one thing that means most to them: perform music. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Amid the deluge of news bad and worse, nightly D\J battles between Gen X R&B and hip-hop hitmakers have become a desperately craved bright spot. | | | |  | The Guardian | | People singing from balconies during coronavirus lockdown are part of a long tradition of using music to fight fear, stretching back through the Black Death to the 7th century BC. | | | |  | Salon | | What is the American bard driving at with a 17-minute song on the JFK assassination? David Talbot thinks he knows. | | | |  | Vulture | | On his new album, losing Mac Miller, and the Evangelion dubbing controversy. | | | |  | Bandcamp Daily | | The ensemble, headed by spoken-word phenom Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), use their music to fight for community preservation in the face of disenfranchisement, gentrification, and systemic injustice | | | |  | Hollywood Reporter | | Stars and industry executives are buzzing about the quarantine Zoom concerts featuring everyone from John Mayer to Rick Springfield to Run DMC's Rev Run to Debbie Gibson and Josh Groban: It’s "an uplifting gotta-be-there event." | | | | | | | played a tambourine so well | |  | The New York Times | | A music critic’s soundscape has been reshaped by the wail of ambulances. But she’s learning to hear in unexpected ways. | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | To raise money for musicians who have lost jobs in the pandemic, the April 7 stream of “Full Pink Moon: Opera Povera in Quarantine” includes “The Lunar Opera” by Pauline Oliveros. | | | |  | Billboard | | Blues stars, who depend financially on intensive, road-dog touring are on the front lines of the coronavirus-induced concert shutdown. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | COVID-19 has brought in-person songwriting sessions to a halt, so professional writers are jumping on Zoom and FaceTime to pen next year’s hits. | | | |  | MTV News | | Original cast member Rebecca Blasband remembers her friend, a 'very relaxed and humorous and brilliant songwriter.' | | | | | Vulture | | The creators, songwriters, and cast of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" remember Adam Schlesinger. | | | | | The Guardian | | He planned to hide his sexuality before his cowboy hit Old Town Road made him a superstar at 19. Now the rapper is ready to embrace life as a queer figurehead. | | | |  | NPR | | After cancelled musicals and spring concerts, choral directors across the country are going the extra mile to have their students' voices heard. | | | |  | The Ringer | | A competition between two producers on Instagram Live became a forum for a philosophical discussion about rap music. | | | |  | The Rambler | | I heard the news about the death of the Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki yesterday evening. He was 86, and although one of his carers had recently been diagnosed with Covid-19, th… | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
