Deanie Parker’s Lifetime of Soul

The album of Deanie Parker’s musical life began at 926 East McLemore Avenue, the home of Stax Records, where she worked as a songwriter, singer, arranger, collaborator, and publicist. I sat down with her at the same address recently to discuss the many tracks of her storied career. Her experience at Stax through the ’60s and early ’70s prepared her to become a communications and marketing professional and then a nonprofit manager. In 2003, she was named president and CEO of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and Stax Music Academy and two years later, executive director of Soulsville USA (now Soulsville Foundation). In between there were hit records and brass notes on Beale Street and Emmys for a documentary she produced.

Not bad for someone who aspired to work behind the scenes.

Dressed casually in a caramel-colored sweater and a matching Stax baseball cap that covers her dove-gray hair, Parker exudes confidence. Her handshake is firm and strong and lengthy for a woman in her late 70s. It seems to telegraph, ‘I mean business.’ Duly noted. She begins by dishing about her trip to Los Angeles for the 66th Grammy Awards. She and writer Robert Gordon won two Grammys — Best Album Notes and Best Historical Recording — for their contribution to Written in their Soul: The Stax Songwriters Demos, a six-CD box set that was released in June 2023. 

For Parker, who hadn’t flown since 2020, masking up and traveling halfway across the country was a lot. Her visit coincided with the torrential rains that drenched Los Angeles in early February, so attending the various events meant running beneath umbrellas through downpours. And did I mention the digital hurdles one must clear to gain access to the Recording Academy events?

“I do believe gaining access and navigating the Pentagon is easier!” Parker states with a laugh. 

But navigate it she did. Deanie was thrilled to receive the recording academy’s bronze medallion in addition to the two Grammys given on the night of the show. The honor evoked a jumble of emotions: excitement, nervousness, exuberance, stress. But in front of the Academy audience, she remained composed while speaking proudly of Stax.  

“Stax founder Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton, gave the Stax songwriters a racially integrated paradise where they were encouraged to discover and develop their authentic talents — and they prospered.” 

This was Parker’s first time to be nominated for a Grammy, but she attended the ceremony several previous times when colleagues like Al Bell and Booker T. and the MGs were honored.  

“I didn’t go last year but I helped out when Jim Stewart’s children accepted his Grammy Trustees award posthumously.” Stewart died in 2022 at age 92. “I wanted them to have a great experience,” she says. “It was a personal thing for me.”

Personal because Parker’s professional life took shape at Stax. 

The company, founded in 1957 by Stewart and co-owned by his sister, Estelle Axton (merging the first letters of their last names produced the name Stax), hadn’t been in the former Capitol Theater on East McLemore very long when Parker won a talent show at the Old Daisy Theatre on Beale Street. First prize was a Stax audition. Jim Stewart was impressed by the 17-year-old’s soaring delivery, but told her she would also need to be able to write music. Undaunted, Deanie returned home, sat down at her piano and penned her first song, “My Imaginary Guy.” It was recorded on Volt, a subsidiary label of Stax, and became a regional hit. 

Selling records at the Satellite Record Shop her senior year of high school, Parker became a Gal Friday to Estelle Axton. She helped wherever she could, learning everything about record marketing. She was astute and eager and, in Axton, found a gentle role model. 

“As I look back — how to be a salesperson, how to interact with people, how to be a woman and function and succeed in a male-dominated society — that’s what I learned from Estelle Axton,” says Parker.

By age 21, her pluck and confidence won them over. “I earned the respect and appreciation of those I worked with, and they listened to my input,” she says. Parker became the company’s director of publicity and artist relations. 

Stewart was busy learning how to run a label. “And because he moved into a black neighborhood, he had an open mind and open door,” says Parker. Such openness was rare in Memphis, where segregation kept Black and white residents separate. Stax proved an exception.

“Creative people [black and white] would drop in and musicians would talk about where the gigs were and who was coming to the radio stations. You could network,” says Parker. “We offered a place that galvanized the neighborhood.”

That mix gave rise to Stax’s remarkable stable of singers and songwriters: Rufus and Carla Thomas, the Staple Singers, Otis Redding, Booker T. and the MGs, and Isaac Hayes. When Al Bell joined Stax in 1965 as national promotion director, Parker gained another mentor. She considered Bell “a visionary.” He had worked as a disc jockey in Memphis and in Washington, D.C., and had his finger on the pulse of black music nationally.

“Al Bell was a motivator and negotiator,” says Parker. “He was the door and window to the outside world. He was growing the company and identifying resources that would benefit us, he was recruiting talent. We relied on him to hold class so we could find out what was happening.” 

Bell hired a well-known PR man from Motown who taught Parker how to write press releases, sharing knowledge via letters and phone calls.

She took flight.  

Panning for Gold 

Listen to Deanie Parker and Mack Rice sing “Until I Lost You,” and you’re struck by the youthful energy and raw soulfulness of their voices. The song typifies the music that flowed from Stax: gospel-tinged rhythm-and-blues that was earthy and relatable. Their song was cut as a demo — a recording meant for the ears of label execs and artists — and never released. The collection of music on Written in their Soul comprises “a new reservoir of lost songs” notes Gordon. They were written by some of Stax’s brightest lights: Eddie Floyd, Bettye Crutcher, Mack Rice, The Staple Singers, and Carla Thomas. Some were released but many were nearly lost to time.

Unearthing these gems was the work of multi-Grammy-winning producer Cheryl Pawelski, the co-founder of Omnivore Recordings. In 2003, Pawelski was developing catalog releases for Concord, the company that owns the rights to the Stax catalog (May 1968-1975). She dove into their recording stash in hopes of finding stories that hadn’t yet been told. What she discovered were the Stax demo tapes.

Over 15 years, she listened to 1,300 hours of music, often while traveling for work. It was a Herculean undertaking: The Stax material was sprinkled among thousands of other recordings. But discovering the demos in their original, unpolished form proved compelling. Some songs were simply sung into a tape recorder by the songwriter accompanied by an off-tune guitar, others were more fully formed with horns and lead riffs behind the singers. Nearly all appealed to Pawelski, who likened the search to a treasure hunt.

“This project was so compelling, I couldn’t stop. Every time I found an original Stax demo, it was amazing,” she says. “I had to continue.” 

Robert Gordon shared her enthusiasm. “It’s the kind of project that reaches into my heart. I love the raw edges, the raw sounds. It’s a window into another world.” 

The pandemic gave Pawelski the uninterrupted time she needed to concentrate on the project, gradually winnowing down the 665 songs she had compiled to the 146 featured on the CDs. Gordon and Parker began their work on the project around this time. Pawelski asked Deanie to reach out to the songwriters, many of whom she had remained in contact with over the years, for permission to publish. She would send three or four songs at a time to Parker, “and I’d listen and think, damn, I didn’t know Homer [Banks] wrote that,” she says. “Or I’d wonder why they didn’t put this out when Bettye Crutcher wrote it.”

Hearing the songs after so many years brought memories flooding back. 

Gordon and Parker teamed up to write about the creative process and the musicians behind the songs, “Each of us would write from our own point of view and then compare and decide which was most definitive,” Gordon says it meant a lot to have Parker involved with the project. 

“Deanie is an author. She brings respect, she brings fun, and people want to get involved.” 

As for Parker, the project represented a chance to finally give the Stax songwriters their rightful due. 

“The composers and writers were near and dear to me because they were never celebrated during their time,” she says. “If not for their composing the music, would we have had hit songs? No.”

Parker and Mack Rice often wrote together in the studio. Deanie enjoyed the creative aspect of songwriting; she could read music and played piano by ear. But performing on the road — especially touring the Jim Crow South where travel for African Americans could be dangerous — held no appeal. She chose instead to work behind the scenes, where she felt she could be more effective. 

She and Gordon had numerous phone conversations as she reflected on those magical times. He would ask questions and listen and write, as would Parker, eventually knitting together their material.

“We were equally yoked. And he had to stand down a couple of times,” she says with a hearty laugh. “He’s kind and patient and tolerated me because at times I can be a pretty determined person. So that made it easier, but it was hard work.”

“We want to pour into our young people the love for Stax soul music, the rhythm-and-blues that is the Memphis sound. We want kids to analyze it, to study the process. We must pour what we have into the next generation. That is our gift to them.” — Deanie Parker

The benefit of Gordon’s longevity with Stax is that he knows the company’s complex and vibrant history intimately. He wrote some of the original text for the Stax Museum panels in 2002, produced a documentary, Respect Yourself in 2007, and a book, Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion  in 2013, and interviewed its many artists. But past conversations with songwriters like Bettye Crutcher took on new meaning as he learned more about the creative process behind the demos.

To get more detailed information about the songs, Parker organized a spaghetti dinner, reminiscent of the gatherings Crutcher produced during the company’s halcyon days. Those long-ago dinners relaxed people, creating a  different mood, often softening the men to Crutcher’s songwriting ideas. For the reunited dinner, the project team invited Bobby Manuel, Henderson Thigpen, and (via Zoom) Al Bell. After the meal, they gathered around a table to listen to the music.

“It sometimes felt like a game show,” says Gordon of that night. “Cheryl would play a cut and everyone’s eyes would be closed as they listened. [If it were a game show] Bobby Manuel would have won a Cadillac because he could name the artist and hear each room where it was recorded.” 

The nostalgic evening proved effective. 

At the Stax release party in the spring of 2023, an energetic crowd turned out to celebrate the release of the “new” old music. For Pawelski, the highlight of the evening was when the crowd spontaneously broke into song during the Staple Singers “Respect Yourself.”

Notes Pawelski, “That was the best moment of my entire career.” 

The Ultimate Tour Guide

As we walk through the museum together, Parker becomes animated, sharing memories from the days when the sound of Isaac Hayes’ buttery voice wafted down the hall from his flashy red and white office next to hers, when Johnnie Taylor would sing so pretty, when Al Bell’s visions charted their future.  

But few displays hold as much personal significance as the Hoopers Chapel AME Church of Duncan, Mississippi. The tiny, wood-framed church, built in the heart of the Delta in 1906 by sharecroppers, landowners, and freed Blacks, sat across from the bayou where congregants gathered for baptisms. The church was founded by Deanie’s maternal grandparents, Matthew and Florence Crockett — he a church trustee and she a stewardess — and it provided a loving place for Parker to share her talents. She often sang solos and played the piano during summer visits there, demonstrating what she had learned from her music lessons. In that setting, she came to be at ease in front of a crowd.

“I felt it was the perfect contribution to help visitors understand the roots of this music,” says Parker.

So, with permission from Hoopers’ elders, the chapel was dismantled and rebuilt within the walls of the museum with a new story to tell.

Though her parents divorced while she was still a preschooler, Parker spent time throughout her childhood with both parents, her Aunt Velma and Uncle James, and her grandparents in Mississippi. 

“I was thankful to be born in the family I was. They were principled, solid, faithful, and respected.” They also valued education. Her father became an associate pastor to a prominent African-American Baptist church in Cleveland, Ohio, where she spent time. Her mother remarried and they moved from Ironton, Ohio, to Memphis when Parker was in high school.

We stop to admire a prim, white cotton dress decorated with cascading red roses, a frock Deanie wore to her prom at Hamilton High. “My aunt was the first African-American buyer for Julius Lewis,” notes Parker. Julius Lewis was a stylish department store in Memphis, and was at the height of its popularity in the 1950s and ’60s. “She and my mother chose my prom dress. My mother lived for events like that,” Parker says with a laugh. The dress, which she kept for years in a box at home, was refurbished by a textile specialist at the Museum of Science and History before joining the museum’s collection.

A nearby panel highlights the Mad Lads, a quartet known for their smooth doo-wop harmonies. Parker remembers Estelle liking their sound and wanting to develop a foursome who could match the lush harmonies being produced by quartets on the East Coast. Parker collaborated with her, writing one of the group’s first hits, “I Want Someone,” with Deanie also producing the song and playing piano on the recording.  

As she reflects on the musicians of Stax, one begins to appreciate the commonalities that bound them together. 

“Homer Banks grew up in LeMoyne Gardens Public Housing. He was very, very poor. Bettye Crutcher lived in a duplex where she was raising three boys and working as a nurse’s aide. When you look at Isaac Hayes, he came from Covington, Tennessee, and had it not been for teachers at Manassas High bringing him clothes to wear, he would have been hurting. These were everyday people who came up the rough side of the mountain. Music was their ticket.”

And Stax became their family. The creative fervor that bubbled at the studio led to the production of more than 800 singles and 300 albums. What Stax produced became the Memphis sound.

“We learned not to be embarrassed about our rawness, to accept who we were, and to try our best,” says Parker. “We wanted you to feel us more strongly.”

Moving On

While the company experienced incredible highs during her tenure, by 1974 troubles were cresting. Distribution issues, investigations by the IRS, and financial woes combined to force the company into involuntary bankruptcy. Staff learned the building would soon be padlocked, and Parker took action.

“I got my hands on two copies of everything I could reach. I had to do that. I don’t know why, maybe I acted without thinking. But I had to do that,” she says. She pulled albums and singles and publicity photos from her office and took them home for safekeeping. “And do you know how many years I carted that material around?” She laughs, shaking her head. 

For years, her life’s work resided in her mother’s attic. 

Prudently, Parker returned to college. She knew she would need a degree to move her career forward. In 1977, she earned a BA in professional studies from then-Memphis State University, and worked for several years in communications for WPTY-TV.

Still needing some distance from the painful demise of Stax, she relocated to Dallas. There, she became the YWCA’s marketing director. But Texas never felt like home. “And I didn’t make progress as swiftly as I wanted.” 

When she learned of an opening with Memphis in May (MIM) in 1987, she returned to the Mid-South to be the assistant director of the festival organization, helping to lead them until 1995 when she accepted a position at the MED (now Regional One) as the hospital’s director of communications and marketing. She returned to higher education again during that time, in 1988 completing a master’s degree in public administration with a concentration in public health.

By the mid-’90s, talk about revitalizing Stax circulated. The original building had been razed in 1989 to make way for a church soup kitchen that never materialized. In 1991, a historical marker told the company’s storied history in somewhat cryptic fashion. When Parker learned that Staley and Andy Cates were working on plans to redevelop the Soulsville block, she brightened. She soon became one of the driving forces behind the creation of the museum and music academy, working with board members, investors, and philanthropists, aiding with the local politics, doing whatever was necessary to make the dream a reality.

When it finally opened, Parker was named president/CEO of the museum and music academy and in 2005, headed Soulsville USA (now Soulsville Foundation). Most gratifying was the neighborhood outreach, which had been an important part of Stax’s legacy.

After retiring several times from Stax, she went on to produce the Emmy Award-winning documentary I Am a Man that told the story of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike. As the producer, Parker raised funds and wrote the title song, “I Am a Man.” It was a project of the Memphis Tourism Education Foundation, which Parker chaired in 2009. She and her team won two Emmys for that work. 

Parker is not inclined to rest on her laurels. When I ask her about hobbies, she answers, “My work is my hobby. I have to stay busy.”

Which means considering the future of the Soulsville Foundation. Her greatest desire is to develop an endowment to ensure the organization’s long-term financial stability.

“We need clarity about our vision and our identity,” she says. “I want this place to be financially independent. It’s a burden trying to be creative, to deliver on your mission, to realize a vision and implement a plan if, as a nonprofit, you must worry about financial resources every day. It’s time to take a quantum leap.”

Looking to the Future

Today, the Soulsville campus bustles with activity. Tourists — roughly 65,000 a year — experience the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Teens attend the Soulsville Charter School, a tuition-free institute that prepares 6th-to-12th-grade students for college and beyond. Every afternoon, approximately 100 kids make music together at the Stax Music Academy, an after-school program that provides not just musical training but youth development, academic assistance, and college prep. Sharing their space is the Soulsville Foundation, which charts the course for the organization’s future.

“We try hard to carry on the Stax Records legacy,” says Soulsville Foundation CEO Pat Mitchell Worley, noting the multiple ways in which they engage with the community. “We’re still supported by the neighborhood and the goodwill that was sown by those musicians. We work on leveraging our brand to help the Soulsville neighborhood.”

In fact, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) announced in late March a partnership with Soulsville Foundation and the Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation to create the UTHSC Health Hub: Soulsville, a medical center that will provide convenient, affordable healthcare to the neighborhood. The hub will sit adjacent to the Soulsville Charter School as well as Memphis Delta Prep and LeMoyne-Owen College. The foundation’s work also continues to be supported by people like Deanie and the original board members.

Worley says, “I’d say we’re lucky that our organization has not just Deanie but the founding board members who still have a relationship with us and are still as zealous about supporting us. A lot of organizations cannot say that 20 years later.”

Worley notes that Parker occasionally sits in on rehearsals with students. She relishes hearing them sing the old Stax music. 

“I enjoy her songwriting side,” says Worley. “She gives the kids great feedback.” 

Later this month, Parker will be recognized at the 175th commencement of Rhodes College, where she will receive an honorary doctorate of humanities for her leadership and contributions to Stax.

“This one is special because I’ve always held Rhodes in such high esteem,” she says.

From an honorary degree to receiving a brass note on Beale Street’s Hall of Fame last year, Parker’s legacy will endure. She never sought the spotlight but accepts the recognition — particularly if it will further the Stax mission.

Says Parker, “We want to pour into our young people the love for Stax soul music, the rhythm-and-blues that is the Memphis sound. We want kids to analyze it, to study the process. We must pour what we have into the next generation. That is our gift to them.”