Around 1980, Grammy-award winner Roberta Flack suffered the death of her duet partner Donny Hathaway and during that time she probably came to the professional and personal conclusion that to honor his memory, she should continue to work. It was around this time that she teamed with R&B hitmaker and songwriter Peabo Bryson to make music similar in content to the hits she had created with Hathaway.
The union with Bryson was both commercially and critically successful and gave both Bryson and Flack boosts in both their careers. It was a time of duets (Diana Ross / Lionel Richie, Barbra Streisand / Neil Diamond, Patti Austin / James Ingram, Johnny Mathis / Deniece Williams, Stevie Nicks / Tom Petty, Streisand / Barry Gibb, et. al) and Bryson and Flack fit the bill very nicely.
Bryson took the union with Flack a step further when he began recording some of his most memorable material with other female singers: Natalie Cole, Melissa Manchester and the venerable Nancy Wilson, the song stylist from the 50's and 60's. In fact, he became a Grammy winner himself when he took on the challenge of recording separate Disney cartoon-movie classics with Regina Belle and Celine Dion in the late 80's and early 1990's.
He owes his successes with Flack to bringing him the pop acceptance audience that had eluded him early on his singing career. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.