Mikeru On Western World Music Today

The death of Memphis legend Willie Mitchell robs us of one of soul's greatest producers: the man who patented the genius sound of Hi Records and masterminded a run of peerless hits ("Let's Stay Together," "I Can't Stand the Rain") by Al Green, Ann Peebles and others. Here Colin Escott--a great scholar of American R&B--tells the Hi story.--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

The Tennessee city of Memphis has produced three record companies whose reputations have endured: Sun, Stax and Hi. Not bad considering most other cities of comparable size have produced none.

Of those three, Hi seemed the most likely to become an also-ran, but then--a decade after it was launched--it suddenly took on a new lease of life with the arrival of Al Green. Now not even a cursory history of black music can be written without a reference to Hi Records.

Hi was founded with an investment of $3.50 from Ray Harris. As a rockabilly singer, Harris had cut two luminous but wholly unsuccessful records for Sun in 1956 and 1957. Working in construction to keep himself going, he met Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin, Carl McVoy, who greatly impressed him with a rockabilly version of "You Are My Sunshine." They went to a home studio, paid $3.50 and emerged with a rough demo.

Harris had two partners in the project, Bill Cantrell and Quinton Claunch, who had worked on country music production for Sun in the mid '50s. Rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous at Sun had done little for their fortunes, so Harris, Cantrell and Claunch approached Joe Cuoghi, who owned Poplar Tunes record store and operated a local distributorship. Cuoghi had the financing and industry contacts that the others lacked, and, with Cuoghi's bankroll, Harris went to Nashville and re-cut "You Are My Sunshine," which Hi Records launched in late 1957.