Sound Bites with

Bryant Terry & Don Bryant

In 2021, bryant participated in Sound Bites, a three-part virtual series presented by KCRW, a member station of National Public Radio, exploring the deep entanglements of food, music, and cultural memory. Conceived as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange, the series positioned listening, storytelling, and lived experience as parallel forms of nourishment.

On March 27 2021, bryant engaged in a public conversation with his late uncle, Don Bryant, alongside Good Food host Evan Kleiman and KCRW’s Director of Music, Anne Litt. The dialogue functioned as both intimate family exchange and collective reflection, tracing how creativity is shaped by kinship, collaboration, and place.

Best known as a staff songwriter at Hi Records under producer Willie Mitchell, Don Bryant played a pivotal role in shaping the sound of Memphis soul. While widely recognized for his collaborations with his wife, Ann Peebles, including classics such as “I Can’t Stand the Rain” and “99 Pounds,” Bryant was also an underrecognized solo artist. His debut LP, Precious Soul, was released in 1969, though his own recording career was long deferred in service of his work as a songwriter.

Decades later, Bryant reemerged with renewed creative force, releasing Don't Give Up on Love in 2017, followed by You Make Me Feel in 2020, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album. The Sound Bites conversation foregrounded this late-career renaissance as an act of persistence, dignity, and self-authorship.

Within terry’s studio practice, the event operates as a form of social and sonic assemblage, using conversation, music, and familial history to explore inheritance, care, and the transmission of Black cultural knowledge across generations.

Watch the conversation by clicking here.