Soulful Strut — Stax’s Deanie Parker Talks History, Legacy

This summer, HBO Max premiered the docuseries Stax: Soulsville U.S.A, which offers an inside glimpse into Stax Records, the iconic record label that produced soul legends such as Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MGs, and so much more.

Recently, “Soulful Strut” program host Ayana Contreras got the chance to sit down and speak to Deanie Parker, a songwriter and liner note writer who is perhaps best known as the chief publicist for the venerable Stax recording label, based out of Memphis, Tennessee. Ayana and Ms. Parker discussed Parker’s beginnings with the label as well as what she believed the label contributed to American culture. Ms. Parker also serves as a key voice in Stax: Soulsville U.S.A.

Check out Part One of their conversation below…

Ayana Contreras:
So, I’m so excited to be speaking with you. I know a lot of people when they think about Stax, they think about the artists, but I think just as much about all of the inner workings that made Stax what it was, and you’re such a big part of that. So thank you for spending some time with me.

Deanie Parker:
Absolutely. I’m delighted that you wanted to spend some time with us. We appreciate you helping us to keep the legacy going.

Ayana Contreras:
I think that’s what it’s really about, right? So I was trying to think what I really wanted to talk to you about, and one of the things that struck me is because you were involved with it for so long and you were, from what I read, one of the first Black salaried person at Stax. Is that right?

Deanie Parker:
Actually. I listened to you just now when you said you get to talk to the artist and what have you, but I went there as an artist.

Ayana Contreras:
Yeah, I heard about this. Tell me the story.

Deanie Parker:
Well, when I moved to Memphis from the southern part of Ohio, I joined the Glee Club in the same high school that I graduated from, which is Carla Thomas’s High School. And our Glee Club teacher thought that the little group that I was a part of, there were I think four men and me, Deanie Parker & The Valadors.

And she suggested that we might want to enter the talent contest on Beale Street. And at that time, there were many, many talent contests in Memphis. We won first prize. First prize was an opportunity to audition for Stax Records. We did not have any idea that the person for whom we would be auditioning would be the founder and owner of Stax Records and that was Jim Stewart. And he was a soft-spoken, very kind patient person.

And he explained to us that… if we were to be given an opportunity to record, we would need original material.

At which point all of us looked at each other and he explained what that was all about. And we said, “Okay, well, we don’t have any original material,” but I promised him that we get some original material and got permission to call him back. And I went home and wrote “My Imaginary Guy” and taught it to the Valadors.

And when we were ready for a follow-up audition, I called, we went, we auditioned. He was extremely impressed. And he said, “I think we might have something here worthy of going into the studio and recording.” So we were excited about that because we knew that we were on our way to the stage. We knew we were going to become the artist of the year!

And then he said, “But, you know a record has two sides.” [chuckles] And so that meant that we had to go and create another song. So I went home, started the process all over again. And he thought that both songs were good and it was a regional, hit by the way.

I went on the road for a while… just long enough to experience what it was like for an African-American entertainer during that time to be on the road with no hotels in which to stay, no restaurants in which to eat, certainly couldn’t go in the front door. Restrooms were not for you to use even if you filled your tank with gas along the way at the service station.

All of those horrible experiences… and it didn’t take me long to realize that I just didn’t have the tenacity for that. I didn’t have the taste for it, didn’t have the appreciation. I didn’t have anything that Ruth Brown and the veteran recording artists had. I mean, even Booker T and MGs [Stax’s famed interracial house band], they were out there doing their things. And maybe you’ve read that there were times when Duck Dunn would go inside and get the hamburgers and bring them outside while everybody else stayed in the car because they could not go in and eat together.

I am certain that you know about [Rufus Thomas’s] history and the hardship that he endured trying to become an artist. So anyway, long story short, that helped me to determine that not only was I going to do with my mom insisted that I should do, and that was to continue on go to college, but I wanted to seek a career and an opportunity for myself in the administrative end of the business. And I had enrolled in communications classes and was interested in marketing, and Jim Stewart had nobody doing anything like that at Stax Records because he had just opened the doors.

And he and I talked, and… I think he was probably glad to tell me that I was not going to give Carla Thomas any competition [chuckled].

And if I wanted to look at the administrative end of the business, he welcomed it and I learned on the job, you can’t beat that kind of education, believe me. And I grew in the position. And so I always tell people, Stax Records did so much more for me than I could ever do for Stax Records. That’s how I feel about it.

Ayana Contreras:
But you did a lot for Stax Records. You even continued… while doing your publicity work. You also were still co-writing songs, minor notes, the whole she-bang. So you stayed a little bit in that creative non-administrative end as well.

Deanie Parker:
But that was the beauty of the job that I had, was that when you’re young, you don’t think about how much sleep you need, how you’re going to get your energy. You just keep going and learning everything that you can and enjoying the learning experience. And that was what was happening to me. And fortunately, I had a very, very supportive team in Stax because Jim Stewart was opening doors for me where he thought I could improve myself. Al Bell was arranging opportunities for me to grow within the organization. And so I know that I am so blessed for having been at the right place at the right time, and I had a whole lot of wonderful people praying for my success. And so yeah, you can’t get any better than that.

Ayana Contreras:
So one of my favorite things is liner notes because they tell a very specific story of an artist. So like this album, for instance, you wrote the liner notes for this… Otis Redding Live in Europe, and it talks about how in Paris and London, he was the toast of the town. And I think what was striking to me about it, not just that it’s written very well and it’s very exciting. It’s exciting to read, right? The other part that I love about it is that it’s written by looking now from this point by a Black woman. A lot of these liner notes, as you know, were not, especially during this era. This is 1967, here.

Deanie Parker:
That’s right. You’re absolutely right. When you’re naive and inexperienced to some extent, you don’t hesitate to try things that are out of the box. And I try to use the liner notes as a means of informing the fans about the artist whose record they had on the turntable. But I also wanted it to be fun. I just didn’t want it to be so academic that you felt like you were in a classroom. What was that? There was an album that Otis Redding did. It was the vocabulary that I did. I don’t remember the title of the album, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen it, but which one I’m talking about.

Ayana Contreras:
Yeah, it’s got the green… What is it? A green dictionary on the front. He’s got a little red cap.

Deanie Parker:
Yes, yes.

Deanie Parker:
Right, right. Yes, yes. And so I wrote Otis Redding’s Dictionary of Soul, I think. I decided to have fun with that.

And, so as I look back on my life today, people have told me some things that I did not know about being the first and being Black, and being the only one in the industry at that time, who was producing the kinds of things, creative things that I had an opportunity to affect. And I didn’t think about that. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that I was seizing an opportunity, giving Stax Records the best that I had, working with the artist with whom I considered family, and that we were moving Stax Records forward and we were given the freedom. The freedom, do you hear me? The freedom to be creative in a warm and friendly environment where our talents and music was appreciated.

So everything that we did at Stax for the most part was a first. That was one of the thrills of being at Stax Records.

So, when I hear Bobby Manuel, who was an engineer and a musician, say to a journalist, “Well, if you destroy art, that’s a sin.” And that was very profound to me what he said, because art is from the soul.

It’s from the heart. You’re putting your whole self into it if you really can be categorized as an artist. We hear some things today that we know if it’s art, we don’t know where we’ve been. But I think that what we were doing then was genuine. We were giving it our best. We wanted to create and share messages with people that we thought would offer pleasure, excitement, joy, but also offer a lot of life lessons and would validate some decisions that we were making, like “Who’s Making Love” to you. I mean, hey, so better think about it! So anyway, I could talk on and on.

Ayana Contreras:
Well, you were in the right position, right? [both Ayana and Deanie laugh]

Part II – Stax & The Soul Explosion

Ayana Contreras:
So I see in the background you [have an image of] the “Stax Snap”. One of my favorite Stax periods is the Soul Explosion period, which is where that [logo] first got publicized when it had the blue background before [the hand of the snap] went Black. It’s interesting because the Soul Explosion came out with a lot of beautiful music, beautiful visuals. A lot came out of it, but it came out of, I mean from my perspective, and please correct me if I’m wrong, what really wound up being kind of a sad realization, which was that Stax did not own the rights to their masters of all the things that had been released through Atlantic, through some sort of loophole in the contract. And so they had to build a new catalog of work in a very short period of time and then try and sell that catalog. Is that right?

Deanie Parker:
Sad. I got hooked on that word that you just said. I don’t think it was sad. I think it was painful. And I think that when something hurts you, you have a choice. You can medicate it, you can amputate it, but you need to do something. You got to make a decision. And we did, and we made a decision that we were not going to be stopped, but that we were going to start again. We were going to establish a goal to flood the marketplace with the kind of music that Atlantic, I believe, had attempted to stop us from making.

I’m not sure that if the separation from Atlantic, and there was some great things that came out as a result of our relationship with Atlantic. But I’m not certain that we would have achieved as much as we did in those 10 short years, that we would have created as many wonderful songs and developed as many creative relationships and really made a mark in record time globally as we did because we had to make a choice and we decided that we were not going to take no for an answer. We were not going to be stopped. There was a whole lot of creative energy, and Matt still contained within that team at Stax Records. And so, it also helped us to appreciate just how capable and creative we were.

So painful, yes. Sad, no. When you get on the backside of it, and we were at a familiar facility in Memphis that had recently integrated, called The Holiday Inn Rivermont, and for three days we kept releasing product to the marketplace and we had brought all of the media people in with whom we had been working up to that time, and some that we had never met.

We brought them into Memphis and introduced Clarence Avant. I know you know that name. Chester Higgins with Jet magazine and all of these guys with whom we had relationships and the guys at Rolling Stone, at the trades, Billboard, Record World, Cashbox, do you remember Cashbox? You all remember that?

Ayana Contreras:
I know of it.

Deanie Parker:
You know of it. But it really showcased what we were capable, I think, of doing. And so not sad, but painful.

Ayana Contreras:
Yeah, I hear that. And one of the albums that came out of it, I know you know, but for the readers and folks.

Deanie Parker:
Oh, yes.

Ayana Contreras:
[Isaac Hayes’s 1969 album] Hot Buttered Soul.

Deanie Parker:
Hot Buttered Soul, yes ma’am.

Ayana Contreras:
The album that might not have happened, which was not his first album, but by far it’s his breakthrough.

Deanie Parker:
I think that eventually, it would’ve happened, but it would not have happened when it did. Because sometimes we procrastinate when we think we got unlimited time. But when we know that “Time Is Tight”, as Booker T. says. You have to let the rubber… You have to let it meet the road and get some traction and do what you’re going to do. And that is what that Soul Explosion ended up doing for us. And we didn’t look back. And I think people also don’t think about the fact that Stax Records was challenged from the day that it created its name Stax, because we were in Memphis, Tennessee, and you know what was happening in Memphis, Tennessee at that time [in the early 1960s]. And we were doing the unusual and the unacceptable at Stax Records.

So we were immediately on the number one hate list. And then of course, we were in a backwater town, when I think about some of the hate… But in order to get where we were trying to go, we had to develop relationships with experts in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. Otherwise, we would never have been heard. We would never have been seen. And that was one of the problems that we encountered when we were trying to brand Stax and introduce a number of our artists into the marketplace. But it made us unique.

Ayana Contreras:
I mean, that was the flavor, the thing that other people couldn’t emulate.

Deanie Parker:
That’s right.

Join Ayana Contreras host of Soulful Strut on KUVO JAZZ on Saturdays at 2 pm.

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