Here's my 2 cents.
Dead-lift is a staple movement.
Here's why:
The dead lift allows you to use more weight than any other back exercise. You might be able to handle, let's say, 500lbs on deadlifts, but you likely will not be able to row or do pull-downs with that much weight. The simple act of lifting great amounts of weight with your back has a carry over effect to all other aspects of back training, IMO. The act of dead-lifting 500lbs allows your row movements to have greater stability, and focus more on your lats, rather than straining all your attention to keep the weight up and balanced.
Does it work the lats as directly as a barbell row? No.
However, when I have gone periods where I do not dead-lift, my back gets substantially weaker, and I find myself struggling to do heavy rows. I inevitably get smaller, and start improving on rows again once I add dead-lifts.
All the men in history with the biggest backs have had very strong row movements. And I believe, that you need to have a very strong dead-lift, aod strong back overall to handle very heavy weight on rows.
Jay Cutler, Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, etc were able row 400lbs with a barbell on a regular basis at their peak. In order to do this, you need to be able to comfortably deadlift ALOT MORE THAN 400lbs to row it with decent form.
This is kind of my same idea about bench press. It's a foundational strength movement for your chest, which allows you to press more on incline benches, dumbbells, machines, etc for hypertrophy work.
Edit: This is only true if you use your deadlift strength to actually improve your performance on heavy rows. If you do nothing but deadlift heavy weights, I think this is why some powerlifters have mediocre development of their lats, because they are not also putting equal effort into rows and pullups.
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