Ain't No Sunshine by levipatrick

levipatrick - Ain't No Sunshine

levipatrick

Jul 05, 2025 02:34pm

"Ain't No Sunshine" is a song by Bill Withers from his 1971 album Just As I Am, produced by Booker T. Jones. The record featured musicians Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass guitar, Al Jackson Jr. on drums and Stephen Stills on guitar. String arrangements were done by Booker T. Jones. The song was recorded in Los Angeles, with overdubs in Memphis by engineer Terry Manning. The song was released as a single in 1971, becoming a breakthrough hit for Withers, reaching number six on the U.S. R&B Chart and number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 23 song for 1971. The song reached the Top 40 again in 2009, when it was sung by Kris Allen in the eighth season of American Idol. <h2> </h2><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Withers_-_Just_As_I_Am,_1971_(cropped)_(2).jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Bill_Withers_-_Just_As_I_Am%2C_1971_%28cropped%29_%282%29.jpg" height="206" width="175"></a>Bill Withers, 1971 Withers was inspired to write the song after watching the 1962 movie Days of Wine and Roses. He explained, in reference to the characters played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, "They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong. It's like going back for seconds on rat poison. Sometimes you miss things that weren't particularly good for you. It's just something that crossed my mind from watching that movie, and probably something else that happened in my life that I'm not aware of." For the song's third verse, Withers had intended to write more lyrics instead of repeating the phrase "I know" 26 times, but then followed the advice of the other musicians to leave it that way: "I was this factory worker puttering around," Withers said. "So when they said to leave it like that, I left it." Withers, then 31, was working at a factory making bathrooms for 747s at the time he wrote the song. When the song went gold, the record company presented Withers with a golden toilet seat, marking the start of his new career. "Ain't No Sunshine" was the first of Withers' three gold records in the U.S. Originally released as the B-side to another song called "Harlem", "Ain't No Sunshine" was preferred by disc jockeys, and it became a huge hit, Withers' first. "Harlem" was subsequently covered by The 5th Dimension, who featured it on their Soul and Inspiration album and released it as a single. Withers performed "Ain't No Sunshine" on The Old Grey Whistle Test. It won the Grammy for Best R&B Song in 1972 and is ranked 285th on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.