“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.
Quiet storm remained popular from the late '70s into the early '90s, when mainstream R&B took on a harder-edged hip-hop influence as a result, quiet storm found virtually no new practitioners.Black folks know, sonically and culturally, what the Quiet Storm means, even if they can’t easily describe it. Some artists concentrated near-exclusively on the style, but most recorded more uptempo tracks in addition to the ballads that fit the requirements of the radio format. However, there was also an urbane sophistication and subdued soulfulness that marked quiet storm as unmistakably rooted in R&B. In a way, quiet storm was R&B's answer to soft rock and adult contemporary - while it was primarily intended for black audiences, quiet storm had the same understated dynamics, relaxed tempos and rhythms, and romantic sentiment. Quiet Storm also drew inspiration from Marvin Gaye's lush Let's Get It On LP, the orchestrations of Philly soul, and the gentle, ultra-smooth recordings of Al Green. The album eventually gave its name to a style and radio format that aimed to create very similar moods. In 1975, Smokey Robinson released a smooth, sensuous solo LP of romantic adult soul titled A Quiet Storm.
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