Willie Mitchell

Willie Mitchell began in Ashland and made his name in Memphis. He joined Hi Records in 1961 as both artist and producer, took over the label in 1970, and earned the studio nickname Papa Willie. In the 1970s he produced a run of hits for Al Green, and in 2003 the two reunited for I Can't Stop, their first work together since 1985. Mitchell died in 2010, and his final production, Solomon Burke's Nothing's Impossible, was released that June. The marker stands on Ripley Avenue, Route 370, in Ashland.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum — 16 mi
  The house in Holly Springs where Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862, now a museum of African American history, art and culture.
• Rust College — 16 mi
  The first historically Black college founded in Mississippi, started in 1866 in a Holly Springs church by a formerly enslaved minister and a white Methodist clergyman.
• Big Hill Pond State Park — 29 mi
  A 4,000-acre bottomland park in McNairy County built around a pond that railroad crews dug in 1853, with a 70-foot tower over Dismal Swamp and Civil War earthworks.
• Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site — 34 mi
  The crossroads where Nathan Bedford Forrest routed a larger Union force in June 1864, and where Black regiments, many raised at Corinth, held the bridge that let most of the army escape.

More markers nearby

• Benton County Courthouse — steps away
• Blue Mountain College — 14 mi
• William Clark Falkner — 15 mi
• Tippah County — 15 mi