Bill Withers always sounded like he was strumming the guitar from a seat at his kitchen table — or maybe, at his most luxurious, an easy chair in the living room.

The ultimate homespun hitmaker, he had an innate sense of what might make a song memorable, and little interest in excess attitude or accouterments. Ultimately Withers reminded us that it’s the everyday that is the most meaningful: work, family, love, loss. None of that needs dressing up to feel real; it just needs a good melody. And maybe an unswerving beat.

Withers, who died on Monday, is remembered for his hits (“Lean on Me,” “Use Me,” “Just the Two of Us”) more than for his albums, but maybe that’s an error. By virtue of how he made music, there’s often little difference between the great songs and the very-good ones: His singles weren’t surgically constructed to be smashes, and his non-hits were written in roughly the same way. Idea, groove, hook — and that’s it.