Bill Withers - Beat Club, Bremen, Germany, 3-23-1972

Soul great Bill Withers died last week, on March 30, 2020. He was 81 years old. In honor of his passing, I wanted to post something from him. Unfortunately, like a lot of soul artists, there isn't that much material that hasn't already been released. But after some searching I found something I really like, and here it is.

Withers had a rather unusual career. When he started playing music professionally, he already was in his late 30s. Then he only stayed in the music industry for about a decade before effectively retiring. And even in that decade, he didn't tour that much more make many live TV or radio appearances. Luckily, he released an excellent double album of a 1972 concert called "Live at Carnegie Hall," so at least there's that.

My challenge was to come up with something that didn't just duplicate the live versions of the "Carnegie Hall" album. I think I found it with an appearance he made on the German TV show "Beat Club." It's from around the same time as "Carnegie Hall," but he played a couple of different songs. More importantly, the "Beat Club" performances were all done in a studio with no studio audience, so the overall feel is different. That also means the songs aren't bothered by audience noise.

The "Beat Club" performance is only about half an hour long. I've added some other things to that, essentially gathering up all the remaining live material I had from him. He did a performance for the BBC a few months after the "Beat Club" one that was very similar, except it was in front of an audience. I included the one unique song from that, "Grandma's Hands." Plus, I also added in some of his between song banter from the BBC in front of the "Beat Club" performances. It sounds a bit odd, but trust me, it works.

He did two unique songs for the US TV show "Soul!" in 1971, so I added those at the start. I also included "Better Days," which is from a 1971 movie soundtrack. It's the one officially released track here. It's also the only non-album track of his I could find. I added three more live songs at the end, two from 1974 and one all the way from 1982. That last performance was effectively the end of his musical career - he only performed songs in public a few times after that.

So this is a bit of a stretch to call this the "Beat Club" show, since seven of the songs are from other sources, but oh well. The important thing, in my opinion, is that it's a solid and consistent listen. Note that all of his big hits are included with the exception of "Lovely Day." I couldn't find any live versions of that one.

01 I'm Her Daddy (Bill Withers)
02 Grits Ain't Groceries [All Around the World] (Bill Withers)
03 Better Days (Bill Withers)
04 talk (Bill Withers)
05 Lonely Town, Lonely Street (Bill Withers)
06 Ain't No Sunshine (Bill Withers)
07 talk (Bill Withers)
08 Use Me (Bill Withers)
09 talk (Bill Withers)
10 Kissin' My Love (Bill Withers)
11 Lean On Me (Bill Withers)
12 Harlem - Cold Baloney (Bill Withers)
13 talk (Bill Withers)
14 Grandma's Hands (Bill Withers)
15 Hope She'll Be Happier (Bill Withers)
16 You (Bill Withers)
17 Just the Two of Us (Bill Withers & Grover Washington, Jr.)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15191081/BillWithrs_1972_BeatClbBremnGermany__3-23-1972_atse.zip.html

For the cover art photo, I could have used a screenshot of the "Beat Club" performance, since a video of that exists on YouTube. But it was somewhat low resolution. So instead I've chosen a photo from a 1973 concert in France.