Peabo Bryson, who has provided the soundtrack for so many people falling in love, remembers falling in love with Atlanta.
In the early ‘70s, after growing up in small-town South Carolina, he found himself “driving through Atlanta down I-85, and the skyline was spectacular,” he recalls. “It equated with my vision of Atlantis because you had that domed restaurant on top of the Hyatt Regency. For a country boy like me, that was always fascinating.”
It wasn’t just John Portman’s futurist Polaris restaurant glowing blue that persuaded the smooth soul balladeer to put down roots in Atlanta more than 50 years ago.
“Atlanta was just a very progressive city and a little melting pot. There’s a kind of inherent fairness and acceptance, right in the heart of ‘The South’” — he emphasizes the region in a way that leaves no doubt what he is referring to — “that I found really attractive.”
With a recording contract from scrappy little Bang Records and big dreams, young Robert Peapo Bryson, whose stage name is a riff on his middle name, moved to Atlanta. He’s lived in the city ever since, raised his family, played a lot of golf and tennis and accumulated memories.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Feb. 10 finds him in concert at downtown’s Rialto Center for the Arts, which he can recall as a decrepit abandoned movie house, before its restoration in the ‘90s. To help couples tie a ribbon on a romantic Valentine’s Day package, the Rialto is partnering with the nearby restaurant By George at the Candler Hotel to offer a pre-show prix fixe $80 dinner from 4-6 p.m.
“I like it because people won’t be grumpy when they come in, they won’t be ‘hangry’,” he jokes.
Bryson’s discography and concerts are both well-stocked with love songs, but for a Valentine’s Day week show, he plans to add some deep cuts. “I started looking over my discography for this show and finding songs I particularly like that may not be what somebody would have expected here,” he explains, “but are nonetheless appropriate [for] a day that’s celebrating relationships.
“One of my favorite songs is ‘Did You Ever Know?’,” a long, slow burn from 1999. “I want to remind people of what that kind of emotion is on that high level.”
He also plans to pay tribute to other classic R&B stylists such as Bill Withers and James Ingram. “I take a moment to talk about great artists that have gone to their rest and their music still resonates with us. These are some of the greatest love songs, the greatest ballads ever. I don’t want to do a show and not acknowledge those.”
Bryson’s best-known songs include his duets with female vocalists, starting with “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” with Roberta Flack. He won his two Grammy Awards for duets based on Disney musicals: “Beauty and the Beast” with Celine Dion and “A Whole New World” with Regina Belle. For the Rialto show, singer Tracy Hamlin will handle the duets with Bryson.
Bryson is 72 and has made some changes in his life in recent years. During COVID, when he could not tour and his income fell, he sold his big Buckhead house. He and his wife, singer Tonya Boniface, moved with their young son to a condo in Atlanta just inside the border with Marietta. He is working on material for a new album, which he says will be out this summer.
Living in Atlanta provides plenty of opportunity for Bryson to indulge his passion for golf (he’s a single-digit handicapper), which he talks about with arguably more sparkle than he does his past music hits. He plays regularly as a guest at Decatur’s East Lake Golf Club, as well as Heritage Golf Links in Tucker, and at Chris Tucker’s annual charity golf tournament at Eagle’s Landing Country Club, where he tees it up with fellow celebs such as Julius Erving and Otis Nixon.
Bryson is a talker who loves to tell stories, some of them long, whether it’s playing in a pro-am golf tournament years ago with the late Payne Stewart, or seeking career advice from Cicely Tyson.
“I asked her to look at my program because I felt like I wasn’t getting all that I could get out of it,” he says. “And afterward she said something to me that was so profound and so simple: ‘You had them, and you didn’t do anything with them.’
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘I just got [expletive]-slapped by Cicely Tyson!’”
The actress explained that he needed to take command of the crowd as well as the material.
Now, he gets the audience going. “I’m not gonna leave you alone,” he says. “I’m gonna ask you to stand up, I’m gonna ask you to dance, I’m gonna ask you to put your hands together. We gotta do this together.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Peabo Bryson
8 p.m. Feb. 10 at the Rialto Center for the Arts at Georgia State University. 80 Forsyth St. Tickets: $50-$120. 404-413-9849, Rialto.GSU.edu
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