Willie Mitchell's Royal Studios

Before Al Green, Royal was the House of Instrumentals. In 1956 the Hi Records president Joe Cuoghi and partners Quinton Claunch and John Novarese rented the closed theater, and the Bill Black Combo's Smokie Part 2, Josephine, White Silver Sands and Don't Be Cruel each sold over a million copies. Willie Mitchell met Al Green in 1968, their first album was Green Is Blues, and from 1970 they made seven gold singles in a row. Royal is among the oldest continuously operated recording studios in the world.

What the plaque says

Willie Mitchell's Royal Studios Constructed as the Shamrock Theater in 1915, this building was converted into Royal Recording Studios in 1957. Home of Hi Records and the Hi Rhythm Section, Royal grew from a minor rockabilly studio Into one of the most successful producers of soul music worldwide. Willie Mitchell (1928-2010) created the signature soul sound of Hi Records at Royal, a sound also exemplified by singers Ann Peebles, O.V. Wright, Otis Clay, Syl Johnson, and Al Green. Green's Let's Stay Together, recorded here, topped the charts of Billboard magazine in February 1972 Mitchell, who purchased Royal from Cream Records in 1984, collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists, Including Phineas Newborn, Jr., the Bill Black Combo, Ace Cannon, and Keith Richards.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 0.8 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 1.2 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.7 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 1.8 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.

More markers nearby

• Archbishop James P. Lyke — steps away
• Centenary United Methodist Church — 0.4 mi
• Forrest's Artillery Positions -Aug. 21, 1964- — 0.5 mi
• Dr. Joseph Edison Walker — 0.5 mi