Today, brands and businesses chase young consumers. Black boomers were living well, and wanted mellow tunes to match their mellow life smooth jazz, the classics they grew up on, and velvet vocals over sensuous productions. If we hadn’t made it, we were close (so it seemed then). We were in the Cosby Show era black, white-collar professionals and academics were establishing lives in upscale neighborhoods, sending children to private schools, rubbing shoulders with the elite. Instrumentals also get burn jazz fusion is a favorite.īy the mid-80s, the Quiet Storm was a key part of not only black radio, but black culture. Songs can be current or decades old, deep cuts or singles, and are more likely to be a live version or extended length than a radio edit. While all stations followed the same formula – a multi-hour block of slow jams and mid-tempos with little interruption – some had their own names like “Mellow Melodies,” or in NYC, WBLS’ “Kissing After Dark.” BET (who hired format creator Lindsay for a short while before his death in 1992) developed a late-night video block of Quiet Storm cuts called “Midnight Love.”Īn urban alternative to soft rock or easy listening, Quiet Storm ignores most of the programming rules of commercial radio. Stations in major markets, then secondary markets began adapting the mood music format, most during select dayparts, a few for their overall programming. Competitive station WKYS and their director of black programming, Donnie Simpson, hired Lindsay away and duplicated the program, then they became the leading urban station in DC.

She suggested Melvin name his show after Smokey’s title track, and use the song as an intro (“The Quiet Storm” is still used widely as a programming anthem for the format).Īfter a few months, WHUR moved the program from weekends to every weeknight and rose to the top spot among urban stations in DC. Cathy had been looking for a format that would distinctly target the upwardly mobile, single black women in DC – she’d found it. “I played a lot of old, slow songs.” And because he was inexperienced and uncomfortable behind the mic, he only took a couple of talking breaks an hour. Melvin filled his time with classic slow jam cuts, “WHUR was into jazz then, and I didn’t know a lot about jazz,” Lindsay later told the New York Times. Smokey was unknowingly once again laying a foundation for a black soul era.Ī year following The Quiet Storm’s release, Cathy Hughes (founder of Radio One and TVOne), then director of Howard University’s radio station WHUR, tapped station intern Melvin Lindsay to step in last minute as substitute DJ for a Sunday night slot. But Palmer also noted, “Robinson is moved neither by Marvin Gaye’s macho sensibilities nor by Stevie Wonder’s semimystical mental images, and he has more pop expertise than either.” This wasn’t music to inspire humanity, it was music to inspire the mood. “As the title tune progresses, the sensuality of its lyrics and the loose, improvisational feel of the backup suggest that the album is going to be Robinson’s What’s Going On or Innervisions, a formula-defying statement of both personal and social import,” remarked Rolling Stone writer Robert Palmer in his album review. Inspired and intrigued by What’s Going On, Robinson found his solo stride with his 1975 album, The Quiet Storm. Labelmates Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had proven themselves masters at adapting their sound and message to changing times Gamble and Huff, Isaac Hayes and Barry White were creating lush but seductive mid-tempo productions for their roster including Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes, the Ohio Players and the O’Jays and vocalists like Donny Hathaway, Al Green and Roberta Flack were balancing out ‘70s funk with a deep but effortless soul sound. Soul music had shifted from the Motown sound Smokey helped architect as both a lead artist and songwriter/producer at the legendary company. He’d left the group, taken a break from recording, and then come back with two disappointing solo efforts. In the early ‘70s, Smokey Robinson was languishing post-Miracles. It’s a super black origin story involving a Motown legend, an HBCU institution in one of the blackest cities in America, and the first black woman to become a multimedia mogul. But the story of how the format started and why it became so popular gets lost. The sensuous, romantic mid-tempos and ballads. It’s the distinctive, airy and jazzy music beds behind those voices. It’s the deep, cognac smooth vocals of the format DJs everywhere (I feel like they go to school for that) Drake recently paid homage to Toronto Quiet Storm host Al Woods and the format itself through snippets on his Scorpion album. Black folks know, sonically and culturally, what the Quiet Storm means, even if they can’t easily describe it.

Sexiest quiet storm songs