Willie Mitchell (March 23, 1928 – January 5, 2010)

Willie Mitchell, who has died aged 81, was an icon of Memphis music. As producer, arranger and sometimes co-writer, he moulded the careers of the soul singers OV Wright, Otis Clay, Ann Peebles and, especially, Al Green. Out of his shabby studio at 1320 South Lauderdale came Wright’s A Nickel and a Nail, Peebles’s I Can’t Stand the Rain and I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down, Syl Johnson’s Take Me to the River, and Green’s Let’s Stay Together – recordings now regarded as imperishable classics of soul music.

“I Can’t Stand The Rain” – Ann Peebles

“Let’s Stay Together” – Al Green

Born in the small north Mississippi town of Ashland, Mitchell was educated at Rust College in nearby Holly Springs, where he learned trumpet. His models were the jazzmen Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown, but his own direction would be somewhat different. In 1954, following army service, he settled in Memphis, where he led the orchestra at the Manhattan Club and the house band for the Home of the Blues label.

In 1961, he began working for Hi Records, a Memphis independent label that had made an impact on the jukebox market with funky instrumentals. Mitchell had a few minor hits of his own during the 60s with similar fare such as Buster Browne and Soul Serenade, and over the years would issue more than a dozen instrumental albums.

“The Champion” – Willie Mitchell

“That Driving Beat” – Willie Mitchell

 But his position at Hi gradually shifted to the other side of the control-room window, as he supervised sessions and drew together the peerless rhythm section of drummer Al Jackson and the three Hodges brothers, Charles, Teenie and Leroy.

In 1970, with most of Hi’s original partners dead or out of the business, Mitchell became the company’s executive vice-president and quit touring as a bandleader. The following year he met Green and, as the music historian Charlie Gillett wrote in The Sound of the City, “used all his experience to galvanise [Green] into a series of masterly performances in the early 1970s. At last, soul found itself a true star, as Al Green crooned, beseeched, and insinuated his way into real acceptance by pop radio and its listeners, without losing the black fans of rhythm and blues music”.

In the late 70s, however, Green exchanged soul singing for soul-saving. Its star lost to the church, Hi foundered and was sold. Mitchell – who kept the studio – was by then internationally known for his skill at colouring blues-based music with tints of orchestral strings and brass, without sacrificing the intensity of the original hue. In 1975, he contributed as both arranger and engineer to Rod Stewart’s album Atlantic Crossing, and over the next three decades he would be repeatedly hired by artists who recognised the ambience he could bring to a recording – among them were figures as disparate as Tina Turner, Keith Richards, Memphis bluesman Preston Shannon and the Scottish band Wet Wet Wet, whose debut album he produced in 1987.

“This Old Heart Of Mine” (Alternative Version) – Rod Stewart

He resumed his association with Al Green in the mid-80s, producing the album Going Away, and again in the new century, when they worked together on the albums I Can’t Stop and Everything’s OK.

In 2004 the stretch of South Lauderdale including Mitchell’s Royal Studios was renamed Willie Mitchell Boulevard. The neighbourhood might have changed in 30-odd years but the premises are little altered: the studio is still a scruffy, slightly makeshift-looking room, its carpet threadbare. But thousands of hours of great music have soaked into the walls, and the place feels like a cathedral of soul. Or perhaps one should say a family home. “Willie is like my brother, my father,” Green said recently. “He treated me like a son,” said Otis Clay. “I learned so much from him … how to survive in a business that isn’t always kind.”

Mitchell himself might have shrugged off such eulogies. “This business, man, it’s not so hard,” he said. “If you got the heart and the ears, you can make it. That’s really all you need.”

In 2008, he received a lifetime award from the Grammy Foundation. Although he had passed the day-to-day management of the studio to his grandson Lawrence (“Boo”), he continued to drop in most days, and was working on various projects, including a new album by Solomon Burke, until he was slowed down last September by a broken hip.

He is survived by his daughters Yvonne and Lorrain, his stepson Archie Turner, his grandsons Archie and Lawrence, granddaughter Oona and nine great-grandchildren.

Words from www.guardian.co.uk

“Strong As Death (Sweet As Love) – Al Green

Strong as death, sweet as love
with the grace, of a dove
Oh baby
Let me in your life

We don’t have that much time
There’s no need in us crying
Hey baby
I’m in the mood for love

If I could tell a story
Of just how it was
Before there was you and me
Before there was love
It was a sad affair

I got to go ahead with myself
Before I find ???
Help me off the shelf
Sweet baby

One more thing I got to say
Strong as death,
You’re a power to be
Sweet as love,
To you and me
Hey baby
Take a chance on me

Strong as death, sweet as love

Hey let me just sing
Strong as death, honey, sweet as love
Strong as death, honey, sweet as love

Strong as love, sweet as love
ah, you’re playing to much music for me