Bill Withers wrote “Grandma’s Hands” as a paean to his grandmother’s wisdom, kindness, and unconditional love. Produced by Booker T. Jones and featuring his bandmate Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass and Stephen Stills on electric guitar, it first appeared on Withers’s 1971 debut album Just as I Am. With a simple 11-bar blueslike structure and just three chords, the song’s most distinctive instrumental facet is Dunn’s quirky pentatonic bass part. The line starts with a pickup phrase, crosses the bar line, hits the downbeat on a seventh, and resolves to the tonic on an offbeat. Zoe plays and sings the song in the original key of E minor. In this video, Zoe orients you to the basic bass line, walks you through the complete song, and discusses the pentatonic scale.
