Peabo Bryson

Peabo Bryson earned his primary reputation as a premier adult contemporary balladeer, yet the soul-rooted tenor already carried 24 prior R&B chart entries when he landed his initial Top 20 pop single in 1983 via the Roberta Flack duet “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love.” He continued to reach exceptional peaks across the remainder of the 1980s before attaining his commercial zenith in the following decade. In February 1993, separate recordings featuring his voice simultaneously occupied the number-one slots on the pop singles chart, the adult contemporary singles chart, the contemporary jazz album chart, and the classical crossover album chart. The Regina Belle duet “A Whole New World” held the first two positions, while Kenny G’s Breathless and the studio cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I claimed the latter two. That same month Bryson received his first Grammy, shared with Celine Dion for “Beauty and the Beast” in the category Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal; the identical award went to “A Whole New World” the next year. Although his recording pace slowed thereafter, he extended his honors with multiple Grammy nominations for the 1999 album Unconditional Love and through his 2018 collaboration with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on Stand for Love.

Born Robert Peapo Bryson in Greenville, South Carolina, he began providing background vocals as a teenager in the mid-1960s. The first artist he backed could not pronounce “Peapo” and therefore called him “Little Willie,” while the next leader encountered the same difficulty, leading Bryson to adopt Peabo as his professional name. Later in the decade he made his recorded debut on the self-released album Now! by Moses Dillard & the Tex-Town Display, delivering lead vocals on “Cry Like a Baby” and “Bring Your Dreams to Me.” Dillard, Bryson, and the group subsequently cut early-1970s singles for Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom label and for the Bang subsidiary Shout!, among them the Dillard-Bryson composition “I Promise to Love You.” Bryson soon signed with Bang as a songwriter, producer, and arranger. In 1975 he issued his first solo single on Shout!, the uptempo Buzz Cason song “Disco Queen,” and appeared on the Bang-distributed Top 30 R&B single “Do It with Feeling,” a funk-leaning track written by Paul Davis and Michael Zager for the latter’s Moon Band. He resumed solo work on the Bang sublabel Bullet with the 1976 album Peabo, which yielded three singles that each approached but did not enter the R&B Top 20.

After departing Bang for Capitol, Bryson thrived during a six-year stretch that produced eight studio albums, most of which reached the Top Ten on the R&B chart. The initial pair, Reaching for the Sky and Crosswinds, arrived in 1978 and generated major R&B hits with their title tracks, “Feel the Fire,” and “I’m So into You,” ultimately earning gold certification. He proved equally effective in partnership, recording the 1979 album We’re the Best of Friends with Natalie Cole and joining Roberta Flack for the 1980 release Live & More as well as the 1983 album Born to Love. The latter set’s biggest single, “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” became the first of Bryson’s four Top 20 pop entries. He broadened his audience by moving from quiet-storm playlists on Black radio to national pop countdown shows. The transition to Elektra sustained that momentum for several years, highlighted by the 1984 ballad “If Ever You’re in My Arms Again,” which climbed to number ten on the pop chart, number six on the R&B chart, and number one on the adult contemporary chart. Late in the decade he returned briefly to Capitol and topped the R&B chart with a cover of Al Wilson’s “Show & Tell.”

The early 1990s brought a succession of further accomplishments. Following his signing with Columbia, the 1991 album Can You Stop the Rain and its title track both reached number one on their respective R&B charts, with the single earning Bryson’s first Grammy nomination. For the Disney film Beauty and the Beast he and Celine Dion recorded the title song, a number-nine pop hit. “A Whole New World,” cut with Regina Belle for the 1992 Aladdin soundtrack, performed even stronger by topping both the pop and adult contemporary charts. Kenny G achieved parallel success on the jazz chart with Breathless, which included Bryson on “By the Time This Night Is Over.” The two Disney-related releases and the Bryson-augmented cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I all stood at their respective peaks when “Beauty and the Beast” captured the Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal; “A Whole New World” made Bryson a two-time winner in the same category the following year. A combination of occasional Christmas projects and full studio albums continued through the close of the decade. Unconditional Love, issued in 1999 on Private Music, featured duets with Roberta Flack and Debbie Gibson and received multiple Grammy nominations.

Bryson maintained an active performing schedule through the 2000s and 2010s while releasing new music less often, yet he retained his signature focus on romantic ballads. Under a distribution arrangement with Concord he issued Missing You in 2007. Eleven years later he returned with Stand for Love, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and released on their revived Perspective label. Bryson co-wrote the majority of the original material with Jam and Lewis and closed the album with a live medley of earlier hits performed alongside Chanté Moore.