Quiet storm appropriates R&B and soul " slow jams" and recontextualizes them into rotations with their peers and predecessors. 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. During this era, it promoted a noticeable shift in the sound of R&B of the time. Quiet storm was most popular as a programming niche with baby boomers from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. Hughes later built on the success of WHUR's quiet storm format to found Radio One, a broadcasting company aimed at African Americans.
WHAT IS A QUIET STORM SERIES
WHUR operator Howard University has registered "Quiet Storm" as a trademark for "entertainment services, namely, a continuing series of radio programs featuring music". 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. 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. 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. After signing a million-dollar, five-year contract with rival Washington DC station WKYS, he left WHUR at the end of August 1985, continuing the quiet storm format on WKYS for five years starting in November with a show called "Melvin's Melodies". Success īecause of the popularity of his show, Lindsey saw his annual salary increase from $12,000 in 1977 to more than $100,000 in 1985. A notable feature of WLNR was that the four regular deejays were women. 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. Addressing the misconception that quiet storm was only for blacks, Tanter said his listenership was 40% black, 40% white, and 20% other races.
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". In 1993, Harper took ill and Champaine continued the program as Quiet Storm II. 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 the San Francisco Bay Area, KBLX-FM expanded the night-time concept into a 24-hour quiet storm format in 1979. with a core black, urban listenership adopted a similar format for its graveyard slot. The format was an immediate success, becoming so popular that within a few years, virtually every station in the U.S. "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 song developed into Lindsey's theme music which introduced his time slot every night. The name of the show came from the Smokey Robinson song "Quiet Storm", from his 1975 album A Quiet Storm. The response from listeners was positive, and WHUR station manager Cathy Hughes soon gave Lindsey and Shuler their own show. 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.
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.
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