When Don Bryant, the soul singer and songwriter whose career stretched from the 1950s through the present day, passed away on the morning of December 26th at the age of 83, it was a wake-up call: Memphis’ great voices and composers from the golden age of soul are slipping away. Of course, Al Green still walks among us, tending to his congregation at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, as do David Porter, Percy Wiggins, Carla Thomas, and Ann Peebles, though the latter — Bryant’s wife since 1974 — has not performed since her stroke in 2012. Others who have moved elsewhere — Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Booker T. Jones — are still thriving, but locally, a resounding silence has settled over Memphis since Bryant’s passing.
While those other names may be better-known, Bryant carried the flame of the journeyman soul singer into the 21st century more resolutely than practically any of his peers, enjoying a busy touring schedule until only recently. And as he performed, he touched all who heard him at a deep level. As Scott Bomar, producer, film composer, and bandleader of the Bo-Keys, told the Commercial Appeal, “Bryant was a fantastic performer, he connected with audiences unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before.” And, since his comeback with 2017’s Don’t Give Up on Love, he proved it over and over again on stages across the U.S. and Europe.
That put an unexpected twist on a career that had previously relied more on composing than performing, as Bryant settled into the role of house songwriter at Willie Mitchell’s Hi Records very early on, after his solitary solo album on Hi, 1969’s Precious Soul, failed to make waves on the charts. And composing seemed to suit him, as Bryant went on to write or co-write over 150 songs for the label’s artists.
One of those artists was Peebles, for whom he co-wrote “Solid Foundation,” the B-side of her second Hi single in 1969. Working with Peebles, Bryant was smitten. As he told the Flyer in 2019, “this beautiful young lady came along and opened up her mouth. Man, everybody went crazy. Me too! Ann Peebles broke on the scene, and I’m telling you, man, everybody was going hog wild. She was really shooting them out there, man, and she was in competition with all the other lady singers around. So that was my first thought of dropping the vocal thing, and going into writing songs. She always needed songs. And I felt, ‘I can do this, and I’d rather go on and do this because they’re gonna concentrate on her and not on me.’ Because her thing just took off like that! But I had no hard feelings about it, nothing, man, and that was one of the reasons why I got up into the music where I could stay right there doing what I love and enjoy what I’m doing. And watch her blossom.”
Writing “I Can’t Stand the Rain” together in 1973, the chemistry was clearly sparking, and by the next year, with that song becoming an international hit, they were married. It was fitting, then, that Bryant’s last single for Hi was his 1981 duet with Peebles, “Mon Belle – Amour.” But while he’d focused more on writing, he never lost his rich, nuanced voice, and the gospel albums he released on Faith Records in 1987 and 2000 would serve to remind the world of that.
Singing was at the core of Bryant’s being, starting with growing up around his father’s gospel group, the Four Stars of Harmony. “My father had a gospel group, and he used to rehearse at the house a lot,” Bryant told the Flyer, “but I listened to all of it, you know: country-Western, pop, jazz, and whatever. I listened to all I could get a hold of because I didn’t have any idea where the idea [for a song] was gonna come from.
“Late in the evening, you’re outside and friends are gathering around, and there were always two or three different people in the neighborhood that could harmonize. You’d get up under the streetlight, start talking, and next thing you know, we’re harmonizing songs. That was, I feel, one of the things that kept me really hooked into music. Because it was all around me, at home and while we were playing games out in the street, when all the kids would gather under the streetlights, you know, to tell stories and harmonize.”
“[Music] was all around, at home
and … in the street, when all the kids would
gather … to harmonize.”
Eventually, such groups of friends solidified into vocal groups, modeled after his heroes, The “5” Royales. “We had several names,” Bryant recalled. “The Four Kings. The Quails. Sometimes it was according to the people that were managing us at the time. Dick ‘Cane’ Cole was a disc jockey, so when we got with him, we were The Four Canes. Names just changed around a lot.”
So did the groups’ solidarity, and Bryant’s first break in the music business came not as part of a group, but as a solo songwriter, penning “I Got to Know” for none other than The “5” Royales in 1960. Even decades later, Bryant would recall that bluesy shuffle as one of his favorite compositions. “When I got that out, that kind of pushed me on,” he said.
He ended up singing with Willie Mitchell’s red hot band, which was becoming renowned for its instrumental rave-ups, but would nevertheless include vocals on choice tracks. As Boo Mitchell recalled in 2017, “He sang on some of my dad’s instrumental recordings. There’s a song called ‘Everything Is Gonna Be Alright,’ and it’s a Willie Mitchell song, but Don is singing. And my favorite is a song called ‘That Driving Beat.’ Again, it’s a Willie Mitchell song, and Don is singing it. It is badass. It’s from 1966, I think.”
It would be a half-century later, after over a decade of behind-the-scenes songwriting at Hi, and his sporadic forays into gospel, before Bryant combined his twin talents of composition and rich, expressive singing. That was the brainchild of Bomar, whose Bo-Keys were already established as solid soul revivalists, using many of the players from Memphis’ golden age of soul. The two albums on Fat Possum under Bryant’s name, 2017’s Don’t Give Up on Love and 2020’s You Make Me Feel, with the Bo-Keys and members of Hi Rhythm backing him, were pitch-perfect, horn-driven slices of R&B and funk that recaptured much of the warmth and slap of classic soul that many considered to be lost to time. Aside from Daptone Records, it appeared that Bryant was single-handedly keeping the soul torch burning. As such, his impact in recent years can’t be overestimated.
That’s why Boo Mitchell, on the cusp of celebrating Royal Studios’ 60th anniversary in 2017, knew that Bryant had to be the centerpiece of the planned performances. “It was really the only thing that made sense to me, historically,” Mitchell said at the time. “We lost O.V. Wright a long time ago. We lost Otis Clay. Obviously Bill Black, we lost him a long time ago. So a lot of the people who were the forerunners, they’re not with us anymore. That’s why it’s so awesome to have Don because he was there with my dad almost from the very beginning. It was just like, that’s the right thing to do. It’s a miracle Don was available because he’s been touring all over the place. And, you know, the stars lined up.”
And now, only a few years later, the stars have fallen silent. Requiescat in pace, Don Bryant.