Listen to Bill Withers’ First New Song in 32 Years

Amanda Wicks
Updated
His tribute to Little Jimmy Dickens is his first new solo song since he retired in 1985

Bill Withers has recorded his first new song in decades for a new tribute album honoring fellow West Virginia musician Little Jimmy Dickens. Withers covers Dickens’ “(You‘ve Been Quite a Doll) Raggedy Ann” as part of the 16-track project The Rhinestone Hillbilly. Listen to it below. Since releasing his final album, 1985’s Watching You Watching Me, Withers has shied away from recording. Over the past three decades, he has written songs for Jimmy Buffet (and appeared on his 2004 album License to Chill) and George Benson. In 2013, he wrote (but didn’t record) “I Am My Father’s Son” as a tribute to the late Bill Russell.

Withers was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. “I really don’t have the personality to do this all the time,” he told Rolling Stone after the ceremony. “I’m not that outgoing. I’m rather shy—I’d rather hide. I never danced. I hid behind the guitar. So it’s all life, you know, as long as you're doing something.” Earlier this year, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Hiss Golden Messenger, Natalie Prass, and many more performed songs from Withers’ catalogue at the 2017 Newport Folk Festival.

Read Pitchfork’s “The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s.”