“Use Me” by Bill Withers

"Use Me" struts out of Still Bill, Bill Withers's 1972 album on Sussex, and it's the gentle soul man flashing a little swagger. Withers traced it to years of women telling him he was too nice, and to deciding to play the game instead: it's trash talk, playful and a touch cocky, from a man who had stuttered badly until he was twenty-eight and was nobody's idea of the popular guy.

The groove hangs on a repeated bass figure from Melvin Dunlap, locked against James Gadson's knotty drums and percussion, with Raymond Jackson on clavinet and Wurlitzer and Benorce Blackmon on acoustic guitar. All four share the production credit with Withers, and it sounds like a band on equal footing with its singer. An eight-minute live take later opened Live at Carnegie Hall in 1973.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.