We Get It, Bill Withers. You Know.

26. That's how many successive times Bill Withers repeats the lyric "I know" in his iconic song "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" from his 1971 debut album Just As I Am. He recorded the album while working at an aircraft parts factory in Santa Clara County, Calif. The album cover is a photo of him on one of his breaks holding his lunch pail. 

"My co-workers were making fun of me," he told Rolling Stone. "They thought it was a joke." Still unconvinced that music would pay off, he held on to his day job until he was laid off in the months before the album's release. Then, one day, "two letters came in the mail. One was asking me to come back to my job. The other was inviting me on to Johnny Carson." The Tonight Show appearance, in November 1971, helped propel "Ain't No Sunshine" into the Top 10. 

Partly excerpted from "Bill Withers: The Soul Man Who Walked Away" by Andy Greene for Rolling Stone, 2015; Photo courtesy of Columbia Records

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