Cache of Stax demos arguably the most significant archival release in years
By Bill Kopp
Most listeners never get to hear demo recordings. Created by songwriters as a guide for recording artists, those demos aren’t meant to be shared with the public. But they’re an important part of the story. A treasure trove of such demos, Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos is the latest – and arguably the most significant – archival release in recent years.
From the early 1960s well into the mid ‘70s, Stax Records reigned supreme. With a top-notch stable of recording artists and performers, the Memphis-based label defined and exemplified rhythm and blues and soul music. Stax’s deep bench of artists represented a powerhouse variety of musical flavors, from the gritty, impassioned soul of Otis Redding to the searing blues of Albert King; from the stirring sounds of the Staple Singers to the eclectic productions of The Dramatics; from the uplifting gospel of the Rance Allen Group and the rock-solid instrumentals of Booker T & the M.G.’s to the psychedelic soul of superstar Isaac Hayes. Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Eddie Floyd, The Bar-Kays, Johnnie Taylor… the list of acclaimed Stax artists is a breathtakingly long one.
There were several key ingredients central to Stax’s creative successes. Jim Stewart launched the label (first known as Satellite) in the late 1950s; his sister Estelle Axton came on board shortly thereafter. From the late ‘60s onward – through the label’s fateful associations with Atlantic and CBS – Stax was helmed by Al Bell. A tightly-knit team of producers, engineers and house musicians provided another part of the Stax backbone: Booker T. Jones and the M.G.’s (Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Al Jackson Jr.) were joined by Hayes and David Porter – often augmented by the Memphis Horns – to create the instrumental components of the signature Stax sound.
But Stax couldn't have made the mark on the charts – and upon popular culture – that it did were it not for the songwriters. From its earliest days, the label focused on bringing in and cultivating the best songwriting talent. And a remarkable number of Stax songwriters were local: the neighborhoods around Memphis’ McLemore Avenue were teeming with budding songwriters ready to provide words and music for the label’s stable of artists to record and release. As singer-songwriter William Bell notes, “Most of [us] were neighborhood kids who grew up together from grammar school to high school and on.” He says that they migrated to Stax, which served as a creative outlet. “Kudos to Jim Stewart and Ms. Axton for that,” he emphasizes.
Ever since the dawn of recording technology, songwriters’ demos (demonstration recordings) have been the industry standard; a songwriter cuts a recording to documents the music and lyrics, and to provide at least a signpost for the producers, musicians and featured recording artists to follow. In most cases, those demo recordings are for internal use only, never meant to be shared with the wider public. But in many cases – especially up to and including during the 1960s – those songwriters’ demos weren’t preserved or even documented. Tragically, countless demos have been lost forever.
Those demos are an important part of the story, though. Taken as a whole, they help complete the picture, opening a window into the process of creating the revered body of work that is the Stax and associated label story. And thanks to intrepid music historian and archivist (and two-time Grammy winner) Cheryl Pawelski, a massive cache of Stax songwriters’ demos is now seeing the light of day. Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos is a massive seven-disc set bringing together more than 140 demos – nearly all previously unreleased – along with illuminating essays from Pawelski, acclaimed music historian Robert Gordon and Stax house songwriter Deanie Parker.
In August 1960, William Bell’s doo-wop group The Del-Rios was asked to provide backup for a Carla Thomas session. “It turned out to be ‘Gee Whiz,’” Bell notes with pride. He would be the first male solo artist signed to Stax. In addition to scoring solo successes with “You Don’t Miss Your Water” (1961), “Private Number” (a 1968 duet with Judy Clay) and “Tryin’ to Love Two” from 1976, Bell was an in-demand songwriter at Stax. Still active today at age 83 as a performer and recording artist, the Grammy winning Bell looks back fondly on his days with the Memphis label.
“We were like a factory,” he says. “We were young and had the energy. We would come in 10 in the morning, maybe noon, and we'd write all day until seven or eight at night, sometimes later.” Each of those marathon sessions might yield three or four songs. “We just wrote continuously,” Bell says.
As the expansive Written in Their Soul vividly illustrates, that factory yielded a great deal of material. “Sometimes, we put so many [songs] back in the can, back on the shelf,” Bell recalls with a hearty laugh, “that we forgot about them until somebody would pull one out!”
Some of the demos on the new set feature vocal and simple accompaniment; others are more fully arranged, often including an entire band. The demos in that latter category often don’t sound like “demos” at all; they have all of the characteristics of a finished recording ready for commercial release. “The songwriters wrote [each song] with the idea in mind that people would hear it,” explains Deanie Parker, who joined the Stax family in 1963 and stayed there until the end. She says that songwriters like herself hoped that the songs would be chosen for further development – “orchestra, background singers or whatever” and then given to “the hottest artists on the Stax label.” And that happened quite often.
Parker would release two singles on Volt, one of Stax’s sister labels. And she wrote songs that would indeed be recorded by high-profile stars. A co-write with guitarist Steve Cropper, her demo of “I’ve Got No Time to Lose” is included on Written in Their Soul. The song would be recorded by Carla Thomas and released (on Atlantic Records) in 1964.
But very good songs were in great supply at Stax, and as a result some solid tunes never found their way to release. Written in Their Soul collects demos of some 66 original compositions – three CDs’ worth – that have never been released in any form until now. Parker’s wonderfully bouncy, gospel-tinged “Spin It” and a deep soul duet with Mack Rice titled “Nobody Wants to Get Old” are just two examples. Cropper’s distinctive guitar tone enlivens the former. And in retrospect, it’s likely that only its slightly out-of-tune piano kept the latter from being suitable for release just as it was.
Some of the house songwriters at Stax were prolific. Written in Their Soul features quite a few tracks from the pens of writers like Rice, Eddie Floyd, Bettye Crutcher and Homer Banks. But for her part, Parker says that she has never been the kind of songwriter who created on demand. “I’m not a career writer,” she explains. “I write on inspiration. When you're having some kind of emotional experience with something happening in life, that's what I relate to most in writing.” Clearly, Parker has had a great deal of inspiration; looking through her BMI song registration list, she notes that she is credited with “somewhere between 50 and 100” songwriting credits.
Asked if she composed “I’ve Got No Time to Lose” with Queen of Memphis Soul Carla Thomas in mind, Parker responds quickly. “I wrote it for someone at Stax to do it, namely Deanie Parker!” she says. “In my mind, I had the first follow-up to the first two singles that had been released on me previously.” But she has no regrets.
“It just wasn't in the cards,” Parker says. “And I am certainly not begrudging.” She believes that having her song assigned elsewhere was the best thing that could have happened to her. “It helped me to determine that fulfilling the demands of a professional, dedicated, skilled artist was not in my DNA,” she says. “I could not have endured some of the things that our male and female artists – especially those whom were Black – had to endure in order to be successful.” Instead, Parker channeled her energies into working behind the scenes at Stax, serving as editor, photographer, press correspondent, publicist, secretary and other key roles at the Memphis label. “Thank god for Jim Stewart,” she says. “He saw that I could make a contribution.”
Parker’s activities at Stax continued to include songwriting and even session work. Six of the 11 songs on Carla Thomas’ 1967 LP The Queen Alone were co-written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, but “Give Me Enough (To Keep Me Going)” is a Deanie Parker original. “I doubled [the vocal] with Carla on that,” she says. And as a skilled pianist, her input was often invaluable, even if she didn’t play on a session. “In the case of Marvell Thomas, I showed him how I formed a chord that got a specific sound that he could not duplicate,” she says with a smile. “Because he was a learned musician. I play from ear. I could sight read, but I didn't care about the construction of a chord. I was going from sound.”
After Stax’s initial run, Deanie Parker went on to other worthy pursuits. When the Soulsville nonprofit organization was formed, she served as its first president and CEO, leading the creation of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and related projects. She remains proud of the Memphis label’s legacy and her part in its success. “Stax Records was the first business that branded Memphis and its music globally. But there was no plan, there was no diagram, there was no architectural rendering,” she says. “It was built on desire and inspiration.” And the inspiration of the label’s songwriters is on vivid display in the new multi-disc collection.
As massive and in-depth as it is, Written in Their Soul is by no means exhaustive. Pawelski – who has been working on the project in various ways for nearly two decades – notes that she culled the 146 tracks from the 665 she found. “I love giant, almost impossible projects; they’re my favorites.” With a wink, she adds, “There could certainly be future projects; I’m ready, willing and able.”
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