Peabo Bryson, a silky-smooth singer whose lengthy resume of chart-topping soul records, many of them duets with renowned female singers, earned him the nickname the Voice of Love, along with two Grammys for the Disney movie hits Beauty And The Beast and A Whole New World, died on June 2 in the US city of Marietta, Georgia. He was 75.

His family confirmed the death, at a hospital, from complications of a stroke. Bryson lived in Atlanta.

Peabo, his first album, was released in 1976, when funk and disco ruled the airwaves.

But four of its sensual ballads – It’s Just A Matter Of Time, Underground Music, Just Another Day and I Can Make It Better – reached the top 30 on the US soul charts, establishing him as an heir to his idols Sam Cooke and Nat King Cole.

Bryson went on to dominate the soul and R&B charts for nearly two decades.

His songs dealt with complex relationships and passionate love, themes that spoke to the adult contemporary listeners who made up the core of his fan base.

“Relationships are a vast thing,” he told news outlet The Chicago Tribune in 1986.

“They’re like people: Everyone is different. So I write about them as I see them, and as I have experienced them.”

Through the 1980s, he developed a reputation as a reliable duet partner, paired with powerful female singers like Regina Belle, Roberta Flack and Natalie Cole, Nat King Cole’s daughter.

A duet with Flack – Tonight, I Celebrate My Love – reached No. 4 on Billboard’s US adult contemporary chart in 1983, his first of many songs to crack the top 20. The next year, he reached No. 1 on the same chart with a solo effort – If Ever You’re In My Arms Again.

But it was in the early 1990s that Bryson had his biggest hits.

Sung with Celine Dion, Beauty And The Beast (1991), his platinum-selling version of the theme song from the Disney ani...