{"id":14064,"date":"2018-02-12T05:30:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T10:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14064"},"modified":"2018-02-13T10:19:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T15:19:29","slug":"don-bryant-this-is-all-i-know-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/12\/don-bryant-this-is-all-i-know-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Don Bryant: This is All I Know (Part One)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Don Bryant started releasing soul 45s under his own name in 1965. But it wasn’t until nearly four years later that he’d finally record and release an album. A collection of well-worn standards, Precious Soul<\/i> was an excellent showcase of Bryant’s vocal prowess. But it displayed only a fraction of the man’s talents. His gospel recordings notwithstanding, fans of Bryant’s powerful yet sweet vocals would have to wait 48 years for a follow-up. With the release of Don’t Give Up on Love<\/i>, the Memphis icon is gaining belated recognition not only for his singing, but for his songwriting skills as well.<\/p>\n

Bryant is far from a songwriting novitiate; he enjoyed success right out of the gate with his first composition, \u201cI Got to Know,\u201d written for and recorded by the \u201c5\u201d Royales in 1960. As a staff songwriter for Hi Records, Bryant would write or co-write more than 150 songs, including the Top 40 hit \u201cI Can’t Stand the Rain,\u201d written for Ann Peebles.<\/p>\n

Even then, he was a seasoned performer. Bryant got his start in music singing gospel with the Five Bryant Brothers. But he says that he never set out specifically to be a singer. \u201cTo tell you the truth, I don’t think goals had anything to do with it,\u201d Bryant says. It was more or less the family tradition. \u201cMy father was a gospel singer, and he had a quartet. He used to rehearse at the house with the group, and we would be around listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryant was part of a large family. \u201cWith seven boys and three girls, you always had enough there for a quartet,\u201d he says with a hearty laugh. To him, the act of forming a gospel group with his brothers was \u201ckind of like imitating my father and his group,\u201d Bryant says. \u201cThat’s what kind of got me started into it.\u201d And he says he stuck with it for one simple reason: \u201cI enjoyed it so much. To me, music was everything; I didn’t want to go no other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryant describes his earliest musical efforts as little more than \u201cjust singing together under the street lamp.\u201d And though he and his brothers started out singing gospel, they soon moved in a more secular direction, singing doo-wop and renaming the group the Quails. The elder Bryant didn’t seem to mind; if he did, he didn’t say much about it. \u201cHe didn’t interfere,\u201d says Bryant. \u201cThere was no problem with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he reveals something that may explain the lack of conflict with his father. \u201cWe would never sing [secular music] around him,\u201d Bryant admits. \u201cBut I’m sure he had a feeling or the knowledge as to what we were doing.\u201d As his brothers left the group to pursue other paths, only Don would stick with music for the long haul. Soon he was in another group, the Four Kings. That group earned a spot on Dick \u201cCane\u201d Cole’s show on Memphis gospel radio station WLOK.<\/p>\n

The Four Kings got their big break when they caught the notice of Willie Mitchell, the bandleader who would soon launch Royal Studios and later run Hi Records. Bryant recalls how he first met Mitchell in Memphis. \u201cIn the city there were clubs that booked bands,\u201d he says. \u201cEach band had a [vocal] group. Willie Mitchell was playing the clubs, and for some reason his group broke up.\u201d Bryant’s group was introduced to Mitchell, and an audition was arranged. \u201cHe said, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a try,’ and from then on we were the [vocal] group with the Willie Mitchell Band.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the singers weren’t yet of legal age. \u201cWhen we started with his band, we were 15, 16 years old,\u201d Bryant recalls. \u201cSo we weren’t allowed in nightclubs.\u201d With the blessing of the young men’s parents, Mitchell got himself appointed legal guardian of all four singers.<\/p>\n

In addition to live dates, the Four Kings did some recordings. \u201cYou Don’t Mean Me Right\u201d and \u201cDo-Li-Op\u201d were both released in the mid 1950s on Fortune Records, and in 1958 the Four Kings were featured on a pair of singles backed by Mitchell’s band. One of those latter singles featured an a-side written by Bryant, \u201cTell it to Me Baby.\u201d Bryant’s songwriting talent was beginning to get noticed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was writing things for my group; Willie was the producer,\u201d Bryant says. \u201cWe found out he was going to be producing some things for the ‘5’ Royales.\u201d He says that he modeled his songs for the Four Kings on the \u201c5\u201d Royales’ style. \u201cAs a young group, you try to imitate your favorite groups. When I heard they were coming, I decided I’d try to write something for them, because I kind of had a feel of their sound.\u201d He wrote \u201cIs There Someone Else on Your Mind\u201d and presented it to the group through Mitchell. The \u201c5\u201d Royales recorded it, releasing it as \u201cI Got to Know,\u201d the b-side of \u201cPlease, Please, Please.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryant was all of eighteen when the \u201c5\u201d Royales cut his song. At that point he still didn’t view songwriting as a career. But the idea was dawning on him. \u201cI figured, if Willie had some more people coming in, maybe I could write some things for them too,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don Bryant started releasing soul 45s under his own name in 1965. But it wasn’t until nearly four years later that he’d finally record and release an album. A collection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14074,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,69],"tags":[3325],"class_list":["post-14064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-soul","tag-don-bryant","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14064"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14131,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064\/revisions\/14131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}