Artist:   William Bell
Song:   "Everybody Loves a Winner"
Album: Stax-Volt: The Complete Singles 1959-1968
Label:   Rhino Atlantic
Year:    1967

It starts with a piano riff right out of Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date.” Then William Bell’s voice comes in with such strength and clarity it seems to take all the air out of the room, leaving only a clear light of sound. For someone who never became a big star, there is very little to equal his greatness on this song.  The lyrics are a morality tale from the Bible: “Everybody loves a winner, but when you lose you lose alone.” Written with Booker T. Jones and recorded at Stax Records in Memphis, soul music like this is similar to Japanese brush painting. There are no wasted strokes, and every instrument and note must be absolutely perfect or the whole thing falls apart. The horns rise and fall with the tortured rhythm of a stricken man’s sighs, backed by an incredibly light touch on the guitar suggesting the fragility of a fallen love. Not even three minutes long, “Everybody Loves a Winner” still feels like a lifetime because there is so much pain inside it. Bell wrote some of the most devastating rhythm & blues anthems there are: “Born Under a Bad Sign,” “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” “You Don’t Miss Your Water” and many others. He knew exactly how to take heartbreak and turn it into something we understand even when it hurts to see, like driving by a car crash without slowing down. And while this might be a forgotten classic, William Bell likely walked out of the studio onto McLemore Avenue and knew exactly what he’d done. The music has that power and the song says it all, just like it should.