Willie Hightower was born in Gadsden, Alabama, in 1940. He started singing in church choirs aged six and later joined Gospel groups. Inspired by meeting Sam Cooke, when he came to perform in Gadsden, Hightower formed an R&B group and in 1965 recorded his first secular song “What Am I Living For” for Bobby Robinson’s Enjoy label in New York. Later singles were released on the Fury label, with a switch in 1967 to Capitol Records, with several of them recorded in Memphis. His first chart entry came in 1968 with “It’s a Miracle”, a song that he had written with producer Bobby Robinson.
It was the link with Capitol Records that brought Willie Hightower to FAME studios in 1970 to record a cover of Joe South’s “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” with Rick Hall producing. Hall suggested the song and, unsurprisingly, given his track record, it was Hightower’s second hit, reaching number twenty-six on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and number one hundred and seven on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. The B-side was “You Used Me Baby”, a song that Hightower had co-written with his grandmother! The FAME Gang played on both tracks.
Hightower went on to release two more singles on the FAME label. “Time Has Brought About a Change” (1970) was inspired by Sam Cooke. It is a powerful, emotional song, with string arrangements by Jimmy Haskell and horn arrangements by Harrison Calloway. The B-side is a lighter ballad written by George Jackson and Mickey Buckins entitled “I Can’t Love Without You”.
The final single release was O.B. Clinton’s song “Back Road into Town” (1971), which took Hightower into Clarence Carter territory. The B-side, “Poor Man”, also has a Country-Soul feel. These tracks are all well-written songs, with strong arrangements and excellent backing from the FAME Gang. Unfortunately, the second and third singles failed to sell well, leading Rick Hall to conclude that the album that he had been contemplating would probably not succeed either. The idea was dropped, and Hightower moved on.
He made several more singles but soon relied on live performances to earn his living.
Out of the blue, Hightower re-emerged in 1982, when he received a telephone call from Quinton Claunch at his home in Gadsden, inviting him to record an album in Memphis with Willie Mitchell at Royal Studios. The sessions were spread over two days, producing twelve songs, with an excellent session band of Teenie Hodges (guitar), Leroy Hodges (bass), Charles Hodges (keyboards), Howard Grimes (drums), Andrew Love (tenor sax), James Mitchell (baritone sax) and Gene Miller (trumpet). For many years, the music was largely unavailable, until, in 2004, Honest Jon Records in the UK issued a compilation “Willie Hightower”, which triggered a lot of interest amongst fans of Northern Soul. Eight years later Capitol Records issued their version of the album, which included the tracks recorded at FAME. In 2016, Capital re-issued Hightower’s pre-FAME album “If I Had a Hammer”, with the FAME songs added as bonus tracks.
These compilations rekindled interest in Hightower and Quinton Claunch stepped in once again in 2015, to offer Hightower the opportunity to record some new songs, at the age of seventy-seven, back in Muscle Shoals! The recordings took place at a new studio in the Shoals called Big Star Studio, which was owned by Billy Lawson, the former sound engineer at Wishbone Studios. Altogether they recorded ten songs and Claunch began to look for a distributor.
The 2018 album “Out of the Blue” on Ace Records
(used with permission of Ace Records UK)
That process took some time, but eventually the album, entitled “Out Of The Blue” was issued by Ace Records in the UK in 2018. The songs are smooth Soul ballads, with Hightower’s voice still in good shape. He may not be an icon, but Hightower never stopped trying.
