- Contains color bi-fold poster of O'Bryan Barcode and Other Identifiers. Matrix / Runout (Side A label): ST-1-12256Matrix / Runout (Side B label): ST-2-12256.
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I grew up thinking that most R&B music was disposable by virtue of it being painfully trendy and up to the moment. More telling was the considerable lag in time for R&B releases to make it to CD vs. its pop and rock counterparts. In my experience, fans confirmed this belief by discarding old music (more than a few months old) for the next thing as 45s, then cassette singles. Record companies perpetuated this myth by recruiting singers and dancers who were nothing more than fronts for a real studio band behind the scenes. Shalamar was a classic example of this dynamic (at its best). In R&B labels groomed these acts for singles. There were exceptions, like Prince or Ray Parker Jr. who could actually play instruments (or do everything in the case of Prince).
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Another one of those exceptions was O’Bryan Burnette, or O’Bryan as he was known to the world. O’Bryan grew up a music loving’ country boy from a small town in North Carolina. After moving to California as a teenager, he continued his piano playing and was introduced to a wider world of music. Eventually he would be discovered by Soul Train host Don Cornelius and the rest was history.
It was a relatively short history of chart relevance, but between 1982 to 84’ O’Bryan was a small sensation on the R&B charts during a time when the genre seemed less interested in crossover success. By his second album You And I, he had moved away from the mostly analog arrangements of his debut to a full on electro-funk sound. I doing so, he traded some of what made him unique as his music was starting to sound like other acts trying to keep up with The System or who had made the electronic transition like Midnight Starr or The Deele. O’Bryan’s new sound did have one unique attribute, his use of a distinctive keyboard based bass. At the time only Stevie Wonder and Carl Carlton has a similar sound, but not to the extent that O’Bryan had.
In addition to playing various keyboards and synthesizer, O’Bryan wrote nearly all the material and handled production duties. The album’s only instrumental “Soft Touch”, highlights his keyboard skills while becoming a popular Sunday night quiet storm radio selection. O’Bryan’s falsetto was his other distinctive trait, a gift used to strong effect on ballads like the wonderful “Together Always” and the title song, a modern remake of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 classic.
O'bryan You And I 30th Anniversary Edition
However great it was to chill with an O’Bryan ballad, it was the dance songs that built his reputation as a dance funk star. The heavy, bouncy keyboard bass of “Im Freaky” and “Shake” were typical of a now electrified R&B. This sound would land him the theme song to Soul Train from 1983 to 1987 with “Soul Train’s A Comin”. The dance funk never obscured O’Bryan’s vocal treatments which were similar to Mic Murphy of The System, but displaying a further range.
O'bryan You And I
As talented as O’Bryan was, his music never rose above the fray in the crowded electrofunk segment. Similar artists like The System would capture the public’s imagination that same year, but remain under R&B’s glass ceiling until the late ’80s. The innovative funk arrangements that O’Bryan used would to some extent be taken to crossover audiences via Michael Jackson.