Memphis Blues Guitar: Inside the Hi Records Sound

Memphis blues guitar is one of the most groove-deep, horn-friendly, singer-friendly styles in American music. It’s the sound of Hi Records in the 1970s, the rhythm parts behind Al Green and Ann Peebles, the propulsive eighth-note pulse that Teenie Hodges carved into songs like “Love and Happiness,” and the kind of tight, chop-heavy comping that makes producers fall in love with a guitar player. In the featured lesson, TrueFire educator Scott Sharrard breaks down exactly how this style works on the instrument, using a one-chord A-flat minor vamp from “Love and Happiness” as the laboratory.

Scott has the credentials to teach this material from the inside. He recorded half of his album Saving Grace with members of the Hi Rhythm Section themselves: Howard Grimes on drums (the player nicknamed “the Bulldog” for the way he refuses to let go of a groove), Leroy Hodges on bass, and Charles Hodges on keys. What he teaches in this video comes directly out of that bandstand experience. Read on for a complete breakdown of every concept Scott covers.

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Why Memphis Blues Guitar Still Matters

Memphis blues guitar sits at the intersection of blues, soul, gospel, and R&B. The genre lines blur on purpose. What unifies the playing is a deep commitment to the groove and the singer. Memphis guitarists work as architects of feel. They make singers sound great, they give horn sections something to weave around, and they hold down the pulse so the drummer and bassist can breathe.

That role is one of the most valuable a working guitar player can master. Producers love it. Songwriters love it. Bandleaders love it. If you can play tight Memphis-style rhythm guitar, you’ll get called for sessions and gigs for the rest of your career.

The Hi Records Sound and the Players Who Built It

The Hi Records sound of the 1970s, produced by Willie Mitchell, set the template for soul-blues guitar. Al Green’s catalog (I’m Still in Love With You being a high-water mark of the era) is the most famous example, but the rest of the Hi roster runs just as deep. Syl Johnson. Ann Peebles. Otis Clay. The Hi Rhythm Section served as the house band on essentially every classic record that came out of the label.

If you’d like an introductory overview of the broader Memphis recording legacy, the TrueFire blog has a piece on the Memphis sound that frames the city’s full musical story. For a guitar player, the Hi Records era is the master class in how rhythm guitar fits into a soul-blues arrangement.

Memphis Soul Guitar: Teenie Hodges and “Love and Happiness”

Memphis soul guitar has no more important practitioner than Mabon “Teenie” Hodges. Teenie co-wrote “Love and Happiness” with Al Green, and his guitar parts on the Hi Records catalog are a clinic in restraint, groove, and tonal character. Scott uses Teenie’s long A-flat minor vamp from the end of “Love and Happiness” as the foundation for this entire lesson. It’s a one-chord groove that lets every other piece of the arrangement (Al’s vocal, the horn lines, the backup singers, the rhythm section) breathe and bloom on top.

The choice of A-flat minor matters. As Scott notes in the video, every key carries a different emotional resonance. Moving a song by even a half-step can change how a singer performs it, how a band feels it, and how a listener receives it. A-flat minor is an unusual key for a guitar player, and that unfamiliarity is part of why the part feels so distinctive on the original record.

Blues Rhythm Comping the Memphis Way: The Chop

The cornerstone of blues rhythm comping in the Memphis style is what Scott calls “the Memphis chop.” Short, percussive notes on the chord. The fretting hand pulses pressure on and off the strings to mute and release the chord rhythmically. The right hand uses all downstrokes with a heavy emphasis on the low E (or whichever bass note your voicing uses). The result is a guitar part that functions as much like a drum as it does a chord instrument.

For Scott’s A-flat minor variation, the chord lives at the 4th fret with the thumb wrapped around the bass note to give the voicing extra heft. The fifth gets dropped from the chord. The first finger bars the top four strings. The thumb anchors the low end. From there, the right hand becomes a percussion instrument. Long notes on the low string, short notes on the chord, and the muted attack of the fretting hand pulse all drive the pattern.

This is one of the hardest skills in rhythm guitar to nail cleanly. Scott’s advice: take your time, and remember that a great quarter note, a great eighth note, and a great sixteenth note in your right hand will make you one of the most valuable guitar players any singer-songwriter, arranger, or producer ever hires.

Rhythm Guitar in a Band: Locking In with the Drummer

Rhythm guitar in a band lives or dies on how tightly you lock in with the drummer’s right hand. In the Memphis style, that means the hi-hat. Howard Grimes, the Hi Rhythm Section drummer Scott toured with in Japan, plays the hi-hat physically up on the cymbal, leaning into every eighth note. The sound of those records is largely the sound of his hi-hat insisting on the groove.

Your job as the rhythm guitar player is to shadow that hi-hat. Your right hand’s downstrokes should land where the cymbal lands. Once you’ve locked that in, the whole arrangement starts to feel like one breathing organism. The bass and the bass-side of your voicing reinforce each other. The chord chop and the snare back each other up. The horns and vocals can float over the top because the foundation underneath them is rock-solid.

Playing Guitar with Horns: Stabs, Triads, and Two-and-Four Accents

Playing guitar with horns is a particular discipline in Memphis-style arrangement. The horns handle the punctuation. Your job is to support them and stay out of their way. Scott demonstrates one perfect approach: take a minor triad in a higher register, play it on the two and the four like a horn-section stab, and let the lower-register chop carry the underlying groove.

The voicing he uses is the A-flat minor triad up the neck (a different inversion than the rhythm chord at the 4th fret). The accent pattern is short and punchy on the 2, with a slight variation on the 4 that pushes against the beat. The result feels like a horn line voiced on guitar, which is exactly the kind of part that earns you a permanent seat in a soul-band rhythm section.

Soul Blues Guitar Vocabulary: Bends, Slides, and Phrasing Behind the Beat

Once the groove is locked, soul blues guitar starts to open up melodically. Scott layers a single-note motif on top of the A-flat minor vamp using a reverse bend, a pull-off to the minor third, and a slide up with vibrato. The notes come from the A-flat minor pentatonic scale, and the phrasing carries more weight than the scale shapes themselves. Every phrase has space around it. Every note lands a little behind the beat, the way a great singer would lean into a phrase.

Scott’s recurring instruction throughout this section is to think like a singer. Think like you’re Al Green. Let the guitar phrase breathe. Pull back from the beat. Let the listener catch up. That kind of patient, vocal-style phrasing is what separates a soulful Memphis line from a generic blues lick. It’s also what makes the part feel like a “cherry on top” of the arrangement, complementing the rhythm section and the vocalist without ever competing with them.

Putting Memphis Blues Guitar Into Your Playing

A practical seven-day plan to start absorbing this style:

  1. Day 1: Listen with intention. Put on I’m Still in Love With You, an Al Green Hi Records compilation, or anything by Ann Peebles or Syl Johnson. Focus your ears on the rhythm guitar parts. Notice how short the chops are, how steady the time is, and how much air sits between the guitar and the other instruments.
  2. Day 2: Learn the A-flat minor chord voicing with thumb-in-bass at the 4th fret. Get the voicing clean before you worry about rhythm.
  3. Day 3: Add the Memphis chop. Practice short notes on the chord with the fretting hand pulsing. All downstrokes. Steady time. Use a metronome at 80 to 90 BPM.
  4. Day 4: Add a long note on the low E between chops. Bring the bass-side and chord-side together so the part moves like a single breathing pulse.
  5. Day 5: Add the pull-off vamp and triplet flourish Scott teaches. Don’t worry about speed. Worry about feel.
  6. Day 6: Add a melodic top line. Reverse bend, pull-off, slide with vibrato. Practice playing behind the beat. Leave space.
  7. Day 7: Play along with the actual record. Try to lock in with Howard Grimes’s hi-hat. Record yourself. Listen back honestly.

For a deeper, instructor-curated catalog of blues guitar styles, TrueFire’s free Blues Guitar Greatest Hits download bundles technique-focused lessons from across the catalog into one resource, including material that touches on the soul and Memphis side of the tradition. It’s a useful companion to everything Scott covers in this lesson.

Take Your Memphis Blues Guitar to the Next Level

Memphis blues guitar rewards every minute you put into it. Locking in with a drummer, playing tight chord chops, layering single-note lines behind a vocalist, supporting a horn section, and phrasing like a singer are the same skills that make a rhythm guitarist invaluable on any gig, in any genre, anywhere. Scott Sharrard’s lesson above is a perfect entry point into this tradition.

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