VIVAMONK FILTER » James Brown http://vivamonk.com ...And with that the singer was content. Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:18:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Bill Withers http://vivamonk.com/2010/01/09/bill-withers-2/ http://vivamonk.com/2010/01/09/bill-withers-2/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 02:34:01 +0000 Vivamonk http://vivamonk.com/?p=9 Bill Withers is the bridge of the very wide musical gap between James Brown and James Taylor. A synthesis of personal-perspective songwriting and the jazz end of the funk spectrum. Prince is the only artist who could approximate the unique nature of Withers’s recordings but hasn’t to date. The clips on YouTube of Withers live with members of the Watts 103rd Street Band, James Gadson on drums, Ray Jackson on keyboards, Melvin Dunlap on bass and especially Bernorce Blackman on guitar are an education.

Bill Withers “Use Me”

Withers is not a remarkable musician, but what he wrings from his limited vocabulary makes someone like Lou Reed just seem silly. Below is an excerpt from the 2008 film “Soul Power” about the music concert that preceeded the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974. The short interview that follows is more recent and shows Withers’s lack of facade.

Withers is the subject of a new documentary “Still Bill.”

“Ain’t No Sunshine” shows an artist in potent form and a band as a text-book example of beauty in restraint.

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