Ain't No Sunshine

Bill Withers recorded the track for his debut album Just as I Am in 1971 at Wally Heider’s Studio 3 in Los Angeles, with Booker T. Jones producing and Bill Halverson engineering. The core session featured Al Jackson Jr., Donald “Duck” Dunn, Stephen Stills, and Withers; strings were overdubbed later, arranged by Jones and recorded by Terry Manning. The song became Withers’ breakthrough hit after DJs flipped attention from the originally issued B-side, turning it into his first major crossover success. It reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song. Ain’t No Sunshine remains one of Bill Withers’ signature recordings and a durable standard of the American soul canon. Its enduring stature was reinforced when the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2024.