(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”
