Willie Mitchell

Willie Mitchell was born William Lawrence Mitchell in 1928 in Ashland, Mississippi. He took up the trumpet at just eight years of age. He later moved to Memphis whilst in high school and began playing in local big bands, until he set up his own combo. His first interest was Jazz, and he retained aspects of that influence throughout his career. He was also attracted to the idea of producing records, which led first to a job at the Home of the Blues record label and then to Hi Records, where he wanted to combine his two interests, performing with his orchestra and producing.

Willie Mitchell

Photo: Hi Records Trade Ad

Between 1963 and 1970, he recorded twelve albums and around thirty singles on the Hi label. Nine of the singles entered the Pop chart’s top one hundred, with seven reaching the top forty of the R&B charts. One of the singles, “Soul Serenade” (1968) charted in the UK. Then, in 1970, things changed, as he took control at Hi Records, when co-founder Joe Cuoghi died. Ray Harris retired, Nick Pesce became president of the company, and Willie Mitchell became vice-president, in charge of the day-to-day operations.

For the next seven years Hi Records became the dominant force in the world of Memphis Soul music. That dominance was centred on a young singer called Al Greene. Willie Mitchell first heard him singing as the lead singer of a group called Al Greene and the Soul Mates in 1969. Suitably impressed, Mitchell signed Green to Hi Records. The “e” at the end of his name was dropped.

Now he helped Green to reach the heights. “Papa Willie”, as he was later known by the team at Hi Records, was responsible for co-producing and engineering all of the albums and singles recorded by Al Green between 1970 and 1976. The best -known of the songs are “Tired of Being Alone”, “Call Me (Come Back Home)”, “I’m Still in Love with You”, “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” and “Let’s Stay Together”. During this period Mitchell helped Green to release eight gold singles and six consecutive number one albums.

Mitchell was also responsible for most of the production and engineering on all the recordings made by the Hi artists, including Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson, Otis Clay and O.V. Wright. The last of these made a strong impression on Mitchell: “When you gave O.V. Wright a song, the song belonged to HIM! Nobody’d ever do it that way again! In fact, I think O.V. Wright was the greatest blues artist I’ve ever worked with”.

As the owner of the Royal recording studio, Mitchell could reach out to artists beyond the Hi Records roster. Two of the best-known acts who came to Memphis to work with Mitchell were Ike and Tina Turner and Denise LaSalle.

Denise LaSalle was, in fact, the first artist to achieve a gold record at Royal, thanks to the magical production and arrangement skills of Willie Mitchell.

Tina Turner was another favourite of Mitchell. When asked by Pete Lewis (during the Blues and Soul On-line interview) who he would most like to record again, he chose Al Green and Tina Turner. He explained his choice: “I’d like to produce Al Green again, if he’d come back from gospel into soul. I’d like to do Tina Turner again too, because she’s just a magnificent lady, she sings well, and we FEEL alike.” Ike and Tina Turner signed with Blue Thumb Records in 1968, releasing two albums that were recorded at Royal with Mitchell.

When Al Green decided to devote himself to the church, Hi Records lost its brightest star. The record company soon went into decline and was sold. However, Mitchell did not sell Royal Studios; instead, he looked further afield. Amongst the artists that he worked with in the post-Hi period were three UK acts: Rod Stewart (“Atlantic Crossing”) in 1975, Keith Richards, and the Scottish band Wet Wet Wet, who asked Mitchell to produce their debut album in 1987. The album finally appeared in 1988 entitled “The Memphis Sessions”.

During the eighties, Mitchell also set up his own record label Waylo Records, to release material by less well-known singers, including Billy Always, Lynn White and Joyce Cobb, who had a hit single in the UK in 1987 with “Another Lonely Night (Without You)”.

When Al Green decided to return to more commercial recording again in the mid-eighties, he turned to Mitchell once more for his production skills on the album “He Is The Light” (called “Going Away” in the UK). Two further albums, “I Can’t Stop” and “Everything’s OK”, were made with Willie Mitchell in the new century.

Hi Records re-appeared too! In 1977 the company had been sold to Al Bennett’s Cream Records, but the label had not been used. The catalogue had been licensed to Motown Records, who re-issued some of Al Green’s recording but ignored everything else, in violation of the initial agreement. Following a legal battle, Bennett’s daughter Adelah Bennett Shaw won back the rights to the Hi catalogue. She took control of Cream when her father died in 1989 and signed a deal with Capitol/EMI to re-issue a wider range of Hi albums through The Right Stuff division. In the late 1990s the label itself was re-activated, with a new roster of artists.

Adelah Bennett Shaw’s efforts seem to have paid off, as a new generation has been able to discover the music that Willie Mitchell helped to create at Hi Records in the seventies. Her comments show an element of surprise: “It amazes me that so many people, kids born in the Eighties, who have no connection to Hi’s early days, still go out and buy Al Green and that alluring sound of Memphis music, of which Hi and its artists and musicians were a legendary part.”

In 2008, Willie Mitchell was given a lifetime award by the trustees of the Grammy Foundation. He was still working in 2009, when he produced Solomon Burke’s final studio album.

Willie died in Memphis on January 5th, 2010.

The Royal Studios are still standing on South Lauderdale, but that stretch of the road has been renamed. It is now Willie Mitchell Boulevard. The work goes on! And a Mitchell is still in charge, Boo Mitchell, Willie’s grandson, whom he adopted as his son.

In 2011 Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars came up with an idea for a documentary film about the music of Memphis and the Mississippi Delta, which he discussed with Boo Mitchell. Boo liked the idea and took on the work of producing the film and recording the music. They attracted a host of Memphis greats to appear in the film, including Mavis Staples, William Bell, Booker T. Jones, Otis Clay, Bobby Blue Bland and Hi Rhythm. The film “Take Me to The River” was released in 2015. It is a wonderful tribute to all the people who made Memphis the centre of the Soul music universe for around twenty years.

Willie Mitchell was one of those people. He could be a hard taskmaster, because he was always seeking for the best. But he was genuinely loved by many of the singers and musicians that he helped. Al Green said of him: “Willie is like my brother, my father.” These words have been echoed by Otis Clay: “He treated me like a son. I learned so much from him… how to survive in a business that isn’t always kind.”

Graeme Clark, the bass player with Wet Wet Wet, has described exactly why Willie Mitchell deserves his iconic status: “Willie Mitchell and Memphis seemed like a way of making music human again, after all we had been through using modern technology. Willie taught me a couple of things about making music. One: the important thing was the song, not the technology; and two: the ‘feel’ was where you connect with people. He was an expert, arguably the best at making music feel right.” (Source: The Independent, Saturday 9th January 2010)

Willie Mitchell had a desire to create music that could be appreciated by all music-lovers, of all races. In Al Green, especially, he found someone who could achieve that.

In 2014 Boo Mitchell added another first to the work of Royal Studios, when he engineered the single “Uptown Funk” at the Royal. He also sang background vocals on the track! The song, produced by British record producer Mark Ronson with guest vocalist Bruno Mars, topped the singles charts in nineteen countries, including the USA and the UK. It sold over eleven million copies in America (11 x platinum!) and three million copies in the UK (5 x platinum). It was named Record of the Year in 2016 at the 58th Grammy Awards ceremony, the first time that a Memphis studio had won this award.

The single was included on the album “Uptown Special”, which was also successful, achieving platinum certification from the RIAA in America and gold certification from the BPI in the UK. Teenie Hodges played guitar on tracks 1 and 7, providing another link to the golden era of Memphis Soul.