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ATLANTA IS FAMED FOR ITS CULTURE

[[5 images]]
MATTIWILDA DOBBS
HEYWOOD
BARON WILSON
JEAN BOOKER
NIPSY RUSSELL

PEABO BRYSON

The lights are low, the mood mellow. Peabo Bryson is onstage, dressed in white suite adorned simply with a red handkerchief, and a white shirt opened to the navel. As women literally swoon in the aisles about him and throw roses at his feet. Peabo calmly delivers his songs of love and passion with the utmost elegance and savoir-faire. He is the paradigm of cool, an iceberg amidst the burning desires of his constituents.

  "There are times when I'm onstage that I think I can do anything short of flying," Peabo casually admits in the privacy of his dressing room after the show. "But when I'm up there, you see exactly who I really am. A lot of male artists sell sex appeal, but I'm not interested in being a sex symbol. I'd much rather be sensual. What women perceive to be sexual in me I feel is actual sensuousness."

***

One day later, Peabo Bryson is walking in the garden of his palatial Atlanta home dressed in jeans and tennis shoes. Pausing before a rose bush, he sniffs its fragrant flowers and, conjuring sweet memories of the evening past, breaks into a smile of sheer content and inner tranquility. Peabo hardly looks the charismatic, magnetic conqueror of the night before, but a charming, innocent young Atlanta businessman.

"I'm still a farmboy on the inside," he laughs. "I may seem chic-de-la-chic when I'm performing, but I still consider myself a Southern Baptist gentleman with Southern manners."

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