Legendary soul singer Bill Withers has passed away aged 81 due to heart complications. The Grammy Award-winning artist penned some of the most delightful songs in the modern American songbook including “Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Just the Two of Us”, and “Lovely Day”.

“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved, devoted husband and father. A solitary man with a heart driven to connect to the world at large, with his poetry and music, he spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other,” Withers’ family said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Withers was a hugely influential artist across the worlds of rock, folk and hip hop and was often covered and sampled by other artists suck as Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and James Blake. Most notably, ‘Grandma’s Hands’ provided the musical heft upon which Blackstreet built the ’90s R’N’B classic ‘No Diggity’.

Record company executives are always on the hunt for hip, young artists to sign and exploit like a coalmine, so recording your debut album as a singer/songwriter at the age of 33 is a rarity. Recording said album with the most sought-after backing band on the planet, Booker T and the MG’s, is frankly stranger than fiction; the kind of thing even Hollywood would struggle to sell. But that is exactly what happened to Bill Withers in 1970 when he recorded his debut ‘Just As I Am’.

Read our retrospective piece on Bill Withers’ Just As I Am here.