The two-time Grammy winner behind ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘A Whole New World’ passed away Tuesday following complications from a stroke
Peabo Bryson, the silky-voiced R&B singer whose gift for romantic ballads and duets made him one of the defining voices of soul music across four decades, died on Tuesday, June 2, in Marietta, Georgia. He was 75. His family confirmed he passed peacefully at 5:00 p.m. ET at a hospital, surrounded by loved ones, from complications of a stroke.
“We are tremendously moved by the outpouring of love, prayers and support from fans, friends, and colleagues around the world,” his family said in a statement. “While our hearts are broken, we find comfort in knowing how deeply Peabo was loved and how many lives were touched by his voice and his generous spirit. His legacy and music will live on for generations to come.”
Born Robert Peapo Bryson on April 13, 1951, in Greenville, South Carolina, he grew up on a farm in nearby Mauldin, raised by his mother Marie and his maternal grandparents. His mother took him to see acts like Little Richard and Sam Cooke, artists who would become touchstones for the kind of singer he wanted to be. By the time he was five or six, he later recalled, he could sing along with most of their songs, astonishing the adults around him.
He won a local talent contest at 12 and began singing backup with Al Freeman and the Upsetters before joining his mentor Moses Dillard in the band Dillard and the Tex-Town Display, which toured the country through the late 1960s. It was Dillard who gave him his nickname, having had trouble pronouncing his middle name. Talent scouts eventually spotted him as a potential solo artist, and in 1976 he released his self-titled debut album with Bang Records, with four of its sensual ballads reaching the top 30 on the soul charts. He signed with Capitol Records the following year.
Through the late 1970s and 1980s he became one of the most dependable presences on the R&B and adult contemporary charts, with hits including “Reaching for the Sky,” “Feel the Fire,” “Crosswinds,” “If Ever You’re in My Arms Again” and “Can You Stop the Rain.” He accumulated nine R&B Top 10s across his career and released 20 studio albums in total, five of which went gold. He spoke openly about writing for both men and women, wanting to show men in particular that sensitivity and tenderness were not weaknesses.
“Relationships are a vast thing,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1986. “They’re like people: Everyone is different. So I write about them as I see them, and as I have experienced them.”
It was his work as a duet partner, however, that cemented his reputation. He developed an extraordinary rapport with a series of powerful female singers, most notably Roberta Flack, with whom he recorded the 1983 album Born to Love and the hit “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” which reached the top five on the R&B chart and the top 20 on the Hot 100. He also collaborated with Natalie Cole, Regina Belle and Kenny G, with whom he recorded “By the Time This Night Is Over,” one of three songs that topped Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
“I think the secret to a really good duet is that you have to fall a little bit in love with your duet partner,” he told Tatler Asia in 2015. “I learned how to do a great duet from working with Roberta Flack because she’s that great.”
But it was two Disney theme songs in the early 1990s that brought Bryson his widest audience. “Beauty and the Beast,” recorded with Celine Dion for the 1991 animated film, reached the top 10 on the Hot 100 and won both singers a Grammy for best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals. Bryson later recalled the intimacy of recording the track with a then relatively unknown Dion, who had been tentative at first before the two slowly built a rapport. “What went on from the point of becoming relaxed was extremely intimate,” he said. “You can’t buy that. You can record it, though.”
A year later came “A Whole New World,” the theme from Aladdin, recorded with Belle. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, knocking Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” from the top spot after a 14-week run, and became the first song from an animated film to top the chart, a distinction it held until “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto in 2022. Both Disney songs also won Golden Globe and Academy Awards for best original song, though those honors went to the songs’ writers. Bryson accepted both Grammys regardless, and never tired of either record.
Despite the commercial heights those songs reached, Bryson consistently refused pressure from labels and other musicians to pivot toward pop, rock or hip hop, insisting on remaining true to his roots even when it cost him commercially. “I have to make music without giving up who I am,” he told the New Pittsburgh Courier in 1992, “not for any pop dream or for any promise of greater success.”
In 2003, the Internal Revenue Service accused Bryson of failing to pay approximately $1.2 million in taxes and seized much of his property, including his Grammy trophies, hundreds of pairs of shoes and a key to the city of Miami, all sold at auction. He suffered a serious heart attack in 2019 but made a full recovery, and released his final studio album, Stand for Love, in 2018 through Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s Perspective Records.
He is survived by his wife, Tanya Boniface Bryson, a former member of the British girl group The 411, whom he married in 2010; their son Robert, known as Kit, born in 2018; a daughter from a previous relationship, Linda Bryson; and three grandchildren.
Peabo Bryson was 75. He was, by his own description, a true Renaissance man who saw no limits on what he could offer. Audiences around the world agreed.