(October 22, 2016) Earlier this year, legendary soul singer and songwriter William Bell returned to his original home, Stax Records, for the appropriately titled This Is Where I Live, his first major release in almost four decades. Known for writing and performing several soul standards – “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” “Private Number,” “Every Day Will Be Like a Holiday,” and “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” among them – Bell co-wrote most of the songs on This Is Where I Live with GRAMMY-winner John Leventhal, who also produced the album.
(October 22, 2016) Earlier this year, legendary soul singer and songwriter William Bell returned to his original home, Stax Records, for the appropriately titled This Is Where I Live, his first major release in almost four decades. Known for writing and performing several soul standards – “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” “Private Number,” “Every Day Will Be Like a Holiday,” and “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” among them – Bell co-wrote most of the songs on This Is Where I Live with GRAMMY-winner John Leventhal, who also produced the album.
This Is Where I Live features newly-penned liner notes by music historian and author Peter Guralnick, who observes that the album “convey[s] home truths from a perspective of age and experience that might not always have been readily apparent to a younger man.” The performances, likewise, are assured and subtle, yet simmering with tension. “At my age,” says Bell, who is 76, “I've had a lot of experience, and I know what my limitations are, what my faults are as a human being, and I utilize that. When I approach a lyric or a melody, I'm brutally honest.”
Nowhere is that approach more apparent on album opener “The Three of Me,” which features a classic William Bell conceit as he catalogs the different sides of a man who has loved and lost. We've been listening to it and needed to share it with SoulTrackers as a song we expect we'll be listening to long after 2016.
Check out this amazing song from the great William Bell. It is our newest SoulTracks Instant Classic.
William Bell - "The Three of Me"