Memphis soul singer and songwriter Don Bryant, who co-wrote the Grammy-nominated song “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” died Friday, Dec. 26 at the age of 83, his family announced on social media.
“Don loved sharing his music and songs with all of you and it gave him such great joy to perform and record new music,” a post on Bryant’s official Instagram account read Friday. “He was so appreciative of everyone who was part of his musical journey and who supported him along the way.”
Bryant’s Instagram biography described him simply as a “Memphis Soul Survivor.”
A longer biography on Bryant’s page on the Fat Possum Records’ website, written by writer and filmmaker Robert Gordon, summarized Bryant’s life as a “three-act drama.”
“… he was just a kid singing gospel with his family who finds his way to the secular side. There, he moves from the mic to the pen, hitting the top of the 1974 charts with a song, ‘Can’t Stand the Rain,’ sung by his wife, Ann Peebles. When she retires in 2012, he returns to the stage stronger than ever and conquers the globe. Don may be pushing 80 years of age, but he’s saved all his energy while away from the spotlight and now he’s blowing ’em kids off the stages,” Gordon wrote in 2020.
Rolling Stone reported Bryant originally struck out as a solo artist, releasing his album, Precious Soul, in 1969. In the 1970s, he focused on songwriting, working with Memphis’ Hi Records, and ultimately credited on hundreds of songs, the magazine reported.
“I wanted to be a part of it,” Bryant told Rolling Stone in 2017. “If it wasn’t gonna be the singing, I was content with trying to do the writing.”
In Bryant’s Fat Possum Records’ bio, Gordon captured the same sentiment.
“Don has made a career by giving his story to other narrators, letting them personalize his thoughts with their musical flourishes. ‘A lot of the songs I wrote,’ [Bryant] says, ‘they came from my experiences. But at the time I knew I would not have the opportunity to record them. Other people were putting their parts to it to make it work for them,’” Gordon wrote.
Bryant may be best known for a string of hits he wrote for his wife, fellow Hi Records artist Ann Peebles, Rolling Stone reported. That includes Grammy-nominated “I Can’t Stand the Rain” in 1973, a song that peaked at No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was later covered and sampled by musicians such as Tine Turner, Seal and Missy Elliott, according to Rolling Stone.
Bryant focused on his wife’s career for much of their lives, “only returning to the stage as a solo artist after she suffered a stroke in 2012 and stepped away from music professionally,” Rolling Stone reported.
Bryant released his first album in almost 50 years in 2017 with Fat Possum Records, followed by another in 2020.
“Music is one of my greatest loves,” Bryant told Rolling Stone in 2020. “When I can concentrate on that, I can take my mind off everything else.”
He released a single, “A World Like That,” in 2021.
But it’s the lyrics of Bryant’s most-popular song that may now bring a tear to fans’ eyes:
“Whoa, empty pillow
Where his head used to lay
I know you’ve got some sweet memory
But, like the window
You ain’t got nothin’ to say.”