That transitional year of 1969 also saw Mitchell add the singer who, even more than Peebles, would come to personify Hi Records in the Seventies -- Al Green. The Mitchell band was playing some dates in Texas. At a stop in Midland, a young singer from Grand Rapids approached Mitchell, asking for help getting home. Al Green had had a minor hit in 1967 with "Back Up Train," but his career had stalled when he first sang for Mitchell.

     "I first heard his voice and I said, 'Man, you've got a beautiful voice. I got a studio and everything. You go out to Memphis and maybe we can make you a star.' And he said, 'How long would it take?' I said, 'About 18 months, a year and a half.' And he said 'I can't wait that long. "

     Green rode Mitchell's van back to Memphis anyway and began recording for the label. They first had him singing other people's songs. But Green, with the same cocky impatience he'd shown in Texas, thought he could do better with something he'd written.

     "We started there with "Can't Get Next To You" and stuff like that and I was toting my song around in my pocket for days on end, saying, 'Hey, I got a song.' And wasn't nobody listening to me. And finally, at the end of the session, I says, 'Well, I still got a song.' And so Willie said, 'Al, what is your song?' I said, "Tired of Being Alone." And he said, 'Go out there to the band and if we have time we'll cut it, if not, just skip it, OK?'"

     "Tired of Being Alone" became Green's first major hit, reaching #7 on the R&B charts, #11 pop in the summer of 1971, setting the sensually yearning, romantic approach that would power his hits for much of the decade. 
"The legacy of Sun and Hi and Stax have all been based around finding an identity for the label as well as finding artists who could be established artists, not just someone who sang songs," says Jud Phillips, a consultant with the modern version of Hi and managing partner in Phillips Entertainment. 

In the early Seventies, Hi had it all. Ann Peebles had cracked the dam, Al Green busted it wide open and Hi's flood of hits kept coming. Teenie Hodges and Green turned out the timeless classic, "Take Me to the 
River." Peebles, Bryant and Memphis DJ Bernard Mr. B. Miller wrote "I Can't Stand the Rain" a twist on all those "Singing in the Rain"-type songs, a precipitation protest that anyone who has survived the Memphis monsoon season can understand.
 
There were still throwbacks to the old Hi instrumentals days, such as saxophonist Ace Cannon's 1971 single, "Drunk," a cover of R&B pioneer Joe Liggins. But the defining sound of Hi in the Seventies was the sophisticated blend Mitchell created with his update of Memphis soul.
 
In the Seventies, Stax, under the direction of Al Bell, was setting its sights far beyond Memphis with such ambitious projects as WattStax and an increasingly wider roster of artists. Hi became the keeper of the flame for real Memphis soul.