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Quiet storm
Quiet storm
Stylistic origins	R&B; smooth soul; smooth jazz; jazz fusion; pop; soft rock;
Cultural origins	Mid-1970s, United States
Other topics
	List of quiet storm songs

Quiet storm is a radio format and genre of R&B, performed in a smooth, romantic, jazz-influenced style.^[1] It was named after the title song on Smokey Robinson's 1975 album A Quiet Storm.^[2]

The radio format was pioneered in 1976 by Melvin Lindsey, while he was an intern at the Washington, D.C. radio station WHUR-FM. It eventually became regarded as an identifiable subgenre of R&B.^[3] Quiet storm was marketed to primarily upscale mature African-American audiences. It peaked in popularity during the 1980s, but fell out of favor with young listeners in the golden age of hip hop.^[4]

History

Origins

Melvin Lindsey, a student at Howard University, with his classmate Jack Shuler, began as disc jockeys for WHUR in June 1976, performing as stand-ins for an absentee employee. Lindsey's on-air voice was silky smooth, and the music selections were initially old, slow romantic songs from black artists of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a form of easy listening which Lindsey called "beautiful black music" for African Americans.^[5] The response from listeners was positive, and WHUR station manager Cathy Hughes soon gave Lindsey and Shuler their own show. The name of the show came from the Smokey Robinson song "Quiet Storm", from his 1975 album A Quiet Storm.

The song developed into Lindsey's theme music which introduced his time slot every night. "The Quiet Storm" was four hours of melodically soulful music that provided an intimate, laid-back mood for late-night listening, and that was the key to its tremendous appeal among adult audiences. The format was an immediate success, becoming so popular that within a few years, virtually every station in the U.S. with a core black, urban listenership adopted a similar format for its graveyard slot.

Philadelphia’s WDAS-FM had begun a similar format in 1972, where Tony Brown hosted “The Extrasensory Connection.” That program was renamed to “The Quiet Storm” in 1976, and is still on the air. ^[6]

In the San Francisco Bay Area, KBLX-FM expanded the night-time concept into a 24-hour quiet storm format in 1979. In the New York tri-state late night market, Vaughn Harper deejayed the quiet storm graveyard program for WBLS-FM which he developed with co-host Champaine in mid-1983. In 1993, Harper took ill and Champaine continued the program as Quiet Storm II.^[7]^[8]

Following in the footsteps of KBLX, Lawrence Tanter of KUTE in Greater Los Angeles changed his station to an all-day quiet storm format from January 1984 until September 1987, playing "a hybrid that incorporates pop, jazz, fusion, international, and urban music". Addressing the misconception that quiet storm was only for blacks, Tanter said his listenership was 40% black, 40% white, and 20% other races.^[9] WLNR-FM in Chicago also changed in August 1985 to a 24-hour quiet storm program called "The Soft Touch", featuring more instrumental music and even straight-ahead jazz, a mix which sales manager Gregory Brown described as "not so laid-back" as other quiet storm shows. A notable feature of WLNR was that the four regular deejays were women.^[9]

Success

Because of the popularity of his show, Lindsey saw his annual salary increase from $12,000 in 1977 to more than $100,000 in 1985 (equivalent to $283,292 in 2023).^[10] After signing a million-dollar, five-year contract with rival Washington DC station WKYS, he left WHUR at the end of August 1985,^[11] continuing the quiet storm format on WKYS for five years starting in November with a show called "Melvin's Melodies".^[9] Part of Lindsey's original style was to mix different decades of music together, for instance playing a Sarah Vaughan ballad in between more modern numbers.^[12]

Lindsey died of AIDS in 1992 at the age of 36, but the quiet storm format he originated remains a staple in American radio programming. WHUR radio still has a quiet storm show, and many urban, black radio stations still reserve their late-night programming slots for quiet storm music. WHUR operator Howard University has registered "Quiet Storm" as a trademark for "entertainment services, namely, a continuing series of radio programs featuring music".^[13]

Hughes later built on the success of WHUR's quiet storm format to found Radio One, a broadcasting company aimed at African Americans.^[14]

Characteristics

Quiet storm was most popular as a programming niche with listeners from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. During this era, it promoted a noticeable shift in the sound of R&B of the time. Quiet storm songs were in most cases devoid of any significant political commentary and maintained a strict aesthetic and narrative distance from issues relating to black urban life. Quiet storm appropriates R&B and soul "slow jams" and recontextualizes them into rotations with their peers and predecessors.^[15]

Music journalist Jason King wrote, "Sensuous and pensive, quiet storm is seductive R&B, marked by jazz flourishes, 'smooth grooves,' and tasteful lyrics about intimate subjects. As disco gave way to the 'urban contemporary' format at the outset of the 1980s, quiet storm expanded beyond radio to emerge as a broad catchall super-genre."^[4]

Ben Fong-Torres of Rolling Stone called quiet storm a "blend of pop, jazz fusion, and R&B ballads—all elegant and easy-flowing, like a flute of Veuve Clicquot champagne."^[16]

Gender and sexuality

For some, the conception of quiet storm represented a shift in the gendered and sexualized musical landscapes of R&B and soul. Music journalist Eric Harvey said that within the quiet storm genre, artists such as Luther Vandross were able to push the boundaries of gender normativity in both their sound and lyricism.^[15] Author Jason King said that through the genre and his music more generally, "Vandross toys with dominant conventions of male sexuality without engaging in androgyny or any explicit forms of traditionally feminine embodiment."^[17]

Given the sensuality and "domesticity"^[15] that the genre became recognized for, artists, particularly men, seemed to be awarded much more freedom in regards to expression of gender and sexuality, as opposed to what were viewed as more "masculine" genres.^[15]^[18]^[19]^[20] Harvey went on to say: "This is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of the Quiet Storm format, and something that Vandross did so well: embrace a male form of domestic sensuality, a musical ideal previously exclusive to women."^[15]

Musical escape

Quiet Storm emerged at a time when the US Black middle-class population was growing and the divide between the Black rich and poor was widening. "The black suburban population doubled between 1970 and 1986, and the number of blacks attending college increased 500 percent between 1960 and 1977."^[15] Quiet Storm was an escape from politics and friction; it reassured Black communities with the feeling of stability and normalcy.^[15]

Radio

In the 1990s, Canadian adult contemporary station CFQR-FM in Montreal aired a Quiet Storm program featuring new-age music. At least two non-commercial FM stations, the community-based WGDR in Plainfield, Vermont, and its sister station, WGDH in Hardwick, Vermont (both owned by Goddard College), have been broadcasting a weekly, two-hour "Quiet Storm" program since 1998—a 50-50 mix of smooth jazz and soft R&B, presented in "Triple-A" (Album Adult Alternative) style, with a strong emphasis on "B" and "C" album tracks that most commercial stations often ignore.

In 2007, Premiere Radio Networks launched a nationally syndicated nightly radio program based upon the quiet storm format, known as The Keith Sweat Hotel. That program, in edited form, broadcasts under the Quiet Storm name (as The Quiet Storm with Keith Sweat) on WBLS in New York City.^[21]

Legacy

The Quiet Storm radio station formula of fostering intimate relationships between Black people, their lovers, friends, and other peers, and their music is evident in modern music production– a most prominent example being The Weeknd’s latest studio album, Dawn FM. Though the album has a more complex musical narrative, his work follows a Quiet Storm broadcast layout: the radio host consumed with the idea of “guiding” the listener through a liberating music escape and the promise of uninterrupted music.

A Toronto-based artist himself, The Weeknd’s influence from Canadian Quiet Storm host Al Wood is evident, capturing Wood's cadence of being a host who hopes to guide his listeners through the storm with multiple interludes in the album.^[22] For example, the end of the opening track of Dawn FM, features a male voice that mimics the sultry, intimate cadence of a Quiet Storm host, stating, “We’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition…Just relax and enjoy another hour of commercial-free…music on 103.5 Dawn FM.”^[23]

References

^ Nelson George (2003). The Death of Rhythm and Blues. Penguin. pp. 132–33, 172–73. ISBN 9781101160671.
^ King 2007, p. 180.
^ Ripani 2006, p. 132.
^ ^a ^b King 2007, p. 181.
^ Todd Beamon (February 10, 1987). "Durable Radio Format Survives Shift in Tastes". The New York Times.
^ Rann Miller (March 1, 2021). "Tony Brown introduced a generation in Phila. To Black love through song". The Philadelphia Inquirer.
^ Rich Schapiro (July 9, 2016). "'Quiet Storm' DJ Vaughn Harper, longtime WBLS staple, dies at 71". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on August 17, 2016. Retrieved August 5, 2018.
^ David Hinckley (May 20, 2008). "Radio: Milestone for a vintage Champaine". New York Daily News.
^ ^a ^b ^c Nelson George (October 4, 1986). "Quiet Storm Sweeps Black Radio". Billboard. Vol. 98, no. 40. pp. 1, 90. ISSN 0006-2510.
^ Ruben Castaneda (March 27, 1992). "Quiet Storm Radio Host Melvin Lindsey Dies at 36". The Washington Post.
^ Jacqueline Trescott (September 5, 1985). "The Voice of the Evening". The Washington Post.
^ Nelson George (December 20, 1986). "The Rhythm & Blues". Billboard. Vol. 98, no. 51. p. 25.
^ "Trademark Status & Document Retrieval". tarr.uspto.gov. Archived from the original on March 21, 2012.
^ Lynn Norment (May 2000). "Ms. Radio". Ebony. Vol. 55, no. 7. p. 100. ISSN 0012-9011.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Harvey, Eric (May 15, 2012). "The Quiet Storm". Pitchfork. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
^ King 2007, pp. 180–81.
^ King, Jason (2000). "Any Love: Silence, Theft, and Rumor in the Work of Luther Vandross". Callaloo. 23 (1): 422–447. doi:10.1353/cal.2000.0037. ISSN 0161-2492. JSTOR 3299570. S2CID 143209453.
^ Beamon, Todd (February 19, 1987). "Durable Radio Format Survives Shift in Tastes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
^ Hurt, Byron, 1970- Gordon, Sabrina Schmidt. Winters, Bill, 1975- (2008), Hip-hop : beyond beats and rhymes, Media Education Foundation, ISBN 978-1-932869-23-1, OCLC 221291123{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ Clay, Andreana (October 2007). "Like an Old Soul Record: Black Feminism, Queer Sexuality, and the Hip-Hop Generation". Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. 8 (1): 53–73. doi:10.2979/mer.2007.8.1.53. ISSN 1536-6936.
^ "Keith Sweat Joins WBLS as Host of The Quiet Storm" Archived January 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Premiere Networks, December 28, 2009.
^ Vox (April 16, 2021). "Quiet Storm: How 1970s R&B changed late-night radio". YouTube.
^ Genius (January 7, 2022). "The Weeknd--Dawn FM Lyrics". Genius.

Bibliography

King, Jason (2007). "The Sound of Velvet Melting". In Weisbard, Eric (ed.). Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music. Duke University Press. p. 172. ISBN 978-0822390558. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
Ripani, Richard J. (2006). The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950-1999. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 132. ISBN 1578068614.