Two-time Grammy award winner Peabo Bryson, known for his Oscar-winning Disney duets with Celine Dion and Regina Belle, has died.<\/p>\n
He was 75.<\/p>\n
Bryson died days after suffering a stroke.<\/p>\n
His family has released a statement saying they are tremendously moved by the outpouring of love, prayers and support from people since his death.<\/p>\n
“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,” the family’s statement said.<\/p>\n
“His legacy and music will live on for generations to come.”<\/p>\n
Tributes are flowing for the singer from fans, friends and colleagues from around the world.<\/p>\n
Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n
\u00a0“For more than five decades, Peabo’s extraordinary voice served as the soundtrack to some of life’s most cherished moments,” the family’s statement said.<\/p>\n
“His music carried generations through joyful celebrations, great love stories and enduring moments of comfort and inspiration.”<\/p>\n
Sought after for duets<\/p>\n
Bryson had a lot of success with duets.<\/p>\n
In 1991, Dion was chosen to sing Beauty and the Beast solo, but she was a new artist at the time, and so she was paired with Bryson.<\/p>\n
The duet was a huge success, reaching number nine on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and won them both a Grammy.<\/p>\n
The title song from Beauty and the Beast also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song.<\/p>\n
Disney came knocking again in 1992 for A Whole New World from the animated film Aladdin, which Bryson sang with Regina Belle, whom he’d worked with before.<\/p>\n
It also won the Best Original Song Oscar.<\/p>\n
The Grammy-award-winning A Whole New World hit number one on the Hot 100 and remained the only song from an animated film to do so until 2022’s We Don’t Talk About Bruno from Encanto.<\/p>\n
Bryson would perform another Disney track in 1997 with Roberta Flack As Long As There’s Christmas which aired during the end credits of the Beauty and the Beast sequel.<\/p>\n
He released many duets with Flack, including Make the World Stand Still and I Celebrate My Love.<\/p>\n
Destined for a career in music<\/p>\n
Born Robert Peapo Bryson in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1951, Bryson was always destined for a music career.<\/p>\n
He started as a teenager by singing backup for the local group Al Freeman and the Upsetters. Freeman couldn’t pronounce Peapo, so Bryson started using the name Peabo instead.<\/p>\n
His first top 10 hit on the R&B chart was 1978’s Reaching for the Sky. His 1979 duet with Natalie Cole Gimme Some Time reached number eight.<\/p>\n
He released 20 studio albums and was nominated for eight Grammys.<\/p>\n
Outside of music, Bryson appeared in stage productions such as The Wiz, Porgy and Bess, and A Raisin in the Sun.<\/p>\n
Bryson had suffered a heart attack in 2019, but made a full recovery. He was placed under medical care after a stroke in late May.<\/p>\n
He is survived by his wife and children.<\/p>\n
ABC\/AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-time Grammy award winner Peabo Bryson, known for his Oscar-winning Disney duets with Celine Dion and Regina Belle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134,346049,346052,346053,346054,346050,346051],"class_list":["post-711851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-peabo-bryson","tag-peabo-bryson-a-whole-new-world","tag-peabo-bryson-beauty-and-the-beast","tag-peabo-bryson-celine-dion","tag-peabo-bryson-dies","tag-peabo-bryson-songs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}