Don Bryant

Although chiefly recognized for his employment as a staff songwriter under Willie Mitchell at Hi Records along with his marriage to the label’s leading artist Ann Peebles, Don Bryant also proved himself a capable and insufficiently celebrated vocalist. His 1960s soul performances displayed a fervent approach that merged Wilson Pickett’s drive with the smoother yet penetrating emotional depth of Joe Tex, qualities preserved on the 1969 album Precious Soul. On subsequent gospel releases he adopted a harsher and more insistent delivery, most clearly on 2000’s It’s All in the World, whose sound drew heavily on contemporary R&B textures. He returned convincingly to earlier stylistic territory with 2017’s Don’t Give Up on Love, whose arrangements and production echoed his classic Hi Records sides while confirming that his voice remained robust.

Born in Memphis on April 4, 1942, Don Bryant grew up with a father, Edward, who performed with the gospel ensemble the Four Stars of Harmony; the younger Bryant himself began singing in church at the age of five. In 1955 he and four brothers established the Five Bryant Brothers, a gospel quartet that soon shifted to doo wop under the name the Quails. Shortly afterward he joined several high-school acquaintances in another doo-wop outfit, the Four Canes, which took its title from their manager, the local DJ D. Cane Cole. After parting with Cole, Bryant renamed the group the Four Kings; the ensemble attracted the notice of trumpeter and bandleader Willie Mitchell, who began featuring them on the Memphis club circuit. Through Mitchell, Bryant secured a recording of his original composition “Is There Someone Else on Your Mind” by the 5 Royales and completed his own first solo session in 1964 with a version of Chris Kenner’s “I Like It Like That.”

Over the following five years he cut several duets with Marion Brittnam and numerous cover versions, the latter forming the basis of his debut full-length release, 1969’s Precious Soul, issued on Hi. His behind-the-scenes work soon proved more rewarding when Mitchell placed him in collaboration with the newly signed Ann Peebles. Initially reluctant to relinquish his position as the label’s featured artist, Bryant nevertheless found immediate creative and personal rapport with Peebles; their relationship began in 1972 and led to marriage two years later. During this period he co-wrote several of Peebles’s signature pieces, among them “I Can’t Stand the Rain” and “99 Pounds,” and the success of those songs earned him a staff songwriting post at Hi, where he supplied material for Al Green, Syl Johnson, O.V. Wright, and Otis Clay.

His own recording activity necessarily diminished throughout the 1970s. Once Hi’s most successful era concluded, both Bryant and Peebles withdrew from the music business for a time; he reappeared briefly in 1986 with the self-released gospel album What Do You Think About Jesus. When Peebles resumed recording in the 1990s, Bryant again contributed songs and instrumental support. In 2000 he issued another gospel collection, It’s All in the Word. Following Peebles’s stroke in 2012 and her subsequent retirement from live performance, Bryant, no longer occupied with extensive touring, concentrated once more on songwriting and composed a group of new pieces honoring his wife. The resulting 2017 album Don’t Give Up on Love examined his soul and gospel roots and enlisted veterans of the original Hi Records studio band; it received favorable critical notice. In 2020 Bryant issued a further LP, You Make Me Feel, which combined newly written material with earlier compositions from his catalog.