An Appreciation of Bill Withers, Soul Music’s Workingman

variety.com:

By Andrew Barker Senior Features Writer In a 1962 radio interview, the famed R&B disc jockey Magnificent Montague asked Sam Cooke to define soul music in eight bars.

Cooke’s response — a wordless hum that curved gently around an imagined melody with inexplicable poignancy — was so spot-on that it should have been transcribed as sheet music in dictionaries.

It was a decade later when Bill Withers, who died today at the age of 81, did him one better, offering an unmistakable summary of soul music in a single bar, instead of eight.

Cue up “Grandma’s Hands,” right before the first verse starts, and you’ll know it when you hear it: “mmm-hmmm…” “Grandma’s Hands” was the song that convinced Clarence Avant, owner of then nascent Sussex Records,