Walk down South Lauderdale Street in Memphis and you pass a low brick building that used to be a cinema. Inside, the floor still slopes the way it did when people watched films there, and that slope is part of why Al Green’s records sound the way they do. Any honest telling of Hi Records history has to start in that room, because the label and the studio were never really separate things.
Stax gets the documentaries and Motown gets the musicals. Hi got something less glamorous and more durable: a sound so specific that producers still fly to Memphis to borrow it. Here is how a small rockabilly imprint became the last great southern soul label, and why it fell apart so quickly once it lost its home.
From rockabilly to the House of Instrumentals
Hi was set up in Memphis in 1957. The driving force was Joe Cuoghi, who owned the Poplar Tunes record shop, with his lawyer Nick Pesce and a handful of investors putting up small sums. The musical partners were Ray Harris, a rockabilly singer, along with Bill Cantrell and Quinton Claunch, a former Sun Records producer. Cuoghi became president and majority shareholder.
The early catalogue had nothing to do with soul. The first real money came from Bill Black’s Combo, led by the bassist who had played on Elvis Presley’s Sun sides, and their instrumental “Smokie Part 2” in 1959. The Combo’s saxophonist Ace Cannon followed with “Tuff” in 1961. Hi did so well with organ-and-sax grooves that the studio picked up a nickname, the House of Instrumentals.
That studio was the old Royal Theatre at 1320 South Lauderdale, a neighbourhood picture house that had closed as a cinema in 1955 and was converted by Cuoghi and his partners into Royal Recording Studios. The raked floor and high ceiling were accidents of its first life, and they gave the room a natural depth that no amount of later equipment has replaced.
Willie Mitchell and the Hi Rhythm Section
The turning point in Hi Records history was the arrival of Willie Mitchell, a trumpeter and bandleader from Ashland, Mississippi, who signed to the label in the early 1960s. He cut his own run of instrumental singles, and “Soul Serenade” reached number 23 in the US and number 43 in the UK in 1968. More importantly, he started running the sessions.
Mitchell had jazz ears and a hard-nosed sense of what sold. When Cuoghi died in 1970 and Harris stepped away, Mitchell moved up the company and the studio became Mitchell’s Royal Sound Studio. From then on, Hi effectively meant Willie Mitchell.
His instrument was a band. The Hi Rhythm Section was built around three brothers: Mabon “Teenie” Hodges on guitar, Charles Hodges on organ and Leroy Hodges on bass, with Archie “Hubbie” Turner on piano. On drums Mitchell used Howard Grimes and, on a great many of the singles, Al Jackson Jr., borrowed from Booker T. & the M.G.’s across town until his death in 1975. Horns usually came from Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love, the pair known as the Memphis Horns, with Willie’s brother James Mitchell writing many of the arrangements.
What the Hi sound actually is
- A dry, heavy kick drum sitting right at the front, often with a tight, almost muted snare. Mitchell wanted the beat felt rather than heard as a crash.
- Charles Hodges’ organ played as a pad rather than a lead, filling the space under the vocal.
- Teenie Hodges’ guitar, all small fills and clipped chords, never a solo where a phrase will do.
- Restraint everywhere. Strings arrive late and leave early. The singer is given room to whisper.
Put that next to the brassier punch of the Stax house band or the swampier rhythm sections in Muscle Shoals, and the difference is obvious within a bar. Hi records are quieter, and the quiet is the point.
Al Green and the peak of Hi Records history
Mitchell brought Al Green to the label at the end of the 1960s. Green Is Blues appeared in 1969 and did modest business. Then Al Green Gets Next to You (1971) gave him “Tired of Being Alone”, and the formula clicked. “Let’s Stay Together” went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and between 1972 and 1973 Hi issued Let’s Stay Together, I’m Still in Love with You, Call Me and Livin’ for You.
What Mitchell did with Green was counter-intuitive. Green could shout with anyone in gospel-trained soul, and Mitchell asked him to stop. The falsetto, the half-spoken asides, the sense of a man talking himself into something: all of that came from a producer pulling the volume down. Teenie Hodges co-wrote some of the best of it with Green, including “Love and Happiness”, “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” and “Take Me to the River”.
For collectors, the original US LPs from this run are worth learning by number:
| Album | Year | US catalogue number |
|---|---|---|
| Al Green, Let’s Stay Together | 1972 | SHL-32070 |
| Al Green, I’m Still in Love with You | 1972 | SHLX-32074 |
| Al Green, Call Me | 1973 | SHLX-32077 |
| Ann Peebles, I Can’t Stand the Rain | 1974 | SHL-32079 |
Beyond Al Green: the rest of the roster
The common complaint, repeated in most potted versions of Hi Records history, is that Hi was a one-man label. It sold like one, but it did not sound like one.
Ann Peebles signed in 1968 and became the label’s tougher, bluesier voice. “Part Time Love” made the R&B top ten in 1970, and “I Can’t Stand the Rain”, written with her husband-to-be Don Bryant and DJ Bernard Miller, reached number 6 R&B in 1973. Those opening electric timbales are one of the most recognisable intros in soul.
Otis Clay came over in 1971 from Chicago and cut “Trying to Live My Life Without You”, a deep soul ballad that only scraped the Hot 100 but later gave Bob Seger a hit. It belongs on any list of essential deep soul 45s.
Syl Johnson, another Chicagoan, recorded his own “Take Me to the River” at Royal in 1975, harder and grittier than Green’s version.
O.V. Wright joined late, in 1977, and his Hi albums, starting with Into Something (Can’t Shake Loose), are among the most moving records the label made. He died in 1980, aged 41.
Don Bryant himself wrote steadily for the roster and is the quiet thread running through much of it.
Why the story ends in 1977
Disco did not help, but the real break in Hi Records history was ownership. In 1977 Hi was sold to Al Bennett’s Los Angeles company Cream Records. Recording moved to the West Coast, and Mitchell soon found that you cannot make Memphis records in Los Angeles. He left the label. Green had already started drifting towards gospel, and The Belle Album (1977) and Truth n’ Time (1978) closed his Hi chapter.
Mitchell ran his own independent label, Waylo, through the 1980s, and reunited with Green for I Can’t Stop in 2003. He received a Grammy lifetime award in 2009 and died on 5 January 2010.
Royal Studios outlived the label, which is the happy footnote to Hi Records history. Willie’s son Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell runs it today, still with vintage MCI consoles, and “Uptown Funk” was cut there in 2014. The studio’s own history page is worth reading for the theatre-to-studio story.
Collecting Hi: pressings and reissues
For collectors, Hi Records history is easiest to follow through catalogue numbers. Singles run from Hi 2001 upwards, and albums were issued in the HL-12000 (mono) and SHL-32000 (stereo) series, with later HLP-6000 and HLP-8000 numbers after the Cream sale. National distribution in the US came through London Records from about 1959 to 1977. The Wikipedia entry on the label gives a fair outline of the corporate side.
A clean first US pressing of Let’s Stay Together or Call Me is not a rare record, so pay for condition rather than for the word “original”. The bass end on Hi records is where worn copies give themselves away first. Reissues have been plentiful, most recently from Fat Possum, and our guide to soul reissue labels covers how to judge who is cutting from proper sources.
Hi Records history: your questions answered
Who founded Hi Records?
Hi was founded in Memphis in 1957 by a partnership led by record-shop owner Joe Cuoghi, with Ray Harris, Bill Cantrell, Quinton Claunch and several investors including the lawyer Nick Pesce.
Who played on Al Green’s Hi records?
The Hi Rhythm Section: Teenie, Charles and Leroy Hodges on guitar, organ and bass, Archie Turner on piano, and Howard Grimes or Al Jackson Jr. on drums, usually with the Memphis Horns and production by Willie Mitchell.
Can you still visit Royal Studios?
Royal Studios is a working studio at 1320 South Lauderdale Street, run by Boo Mitchell. It is not a museum, so check the studio’s website before turning up, but it still records artists in the same room where the Hi classics were made, which makes the building a working piece of Hi Records history.