No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Melvin Lindsey's Quiet Storm

Episode Date: April 9, 2018

On this week's Sidetrack, We explore the origins of the Melvin Lindsey's smooth jazz radio format "Quiet Storm" and the Smokey Robinson song of the same name that inspired the genre. For more info, check out the shown notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/music-review-sade-promise#sidetrack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A very special time. This shows brought to you by Sundry. It's music for relaxation. Music for lovers. Music. Chosen especially. You welcome to the sun's re-quide storm on FM 802 Soft and warm

A quiet stone Quiet as when flowers talk and break a dog And this is our sidetrack episode for the week You're listening to No Filler My name's Quentin I've got my brother Travis with me Last week we did an episode on Shah Day's second studio album Promise.

And for our sidetrack, we're going to dive a little bit into the term Quiet Storm, which is a quote-unquote super genre of contemporary R&B, jazz, fusion, and pop music. So our sidetrack for this week is actually going to be a song from Smokey Robinson's third studio album. called A Quiet Storm, which came out in 1975. The little intro for this side track, you heard a little bit of the title track off of that album. That was Track 1 from A Quiet Storm. And there was a DJ in Washington, D.C. in the mid-70s

by the name of Melvin Lindsay. He was actually an intern at the time. This radio station was called W-H-U-R. It was an FM station. It's actually still an FM station, still on the radio waves. But Lindsay actually became a DJ and he started using just a clip from Robinson's A Quiet Storm for his theme music. And that song introduced his time slot every night. You know, that was the intro for his time slot on WHUR.

and he called it the Quiet Storm. And it was four hours of soulful R&B music that provided, quote, an intimate, laid-back mood, Taylor-made for late-night listening. Our intro was actually another one of the early Quiet Storm pioneers. His name is Von Harper.

And he played on a radio station called WBLS, which was in New York. And he had a Quiet Storm radio program that ran for 35 years. So Milvin Lindsay had a lot of copycats. And to tie it all back to Shadeh, according to Wikipedia, there's no source cited here, but the Quiet Storm programming is credited with helping launch the careers of Luther Vandross and Anita Baker

and with introducing Chadeh to U.S. audiences. So, Okay. Shade's music was first played during these, you know, late night, quiet storm radio shows, which is really cool. And that makes sense, man. That makes sense. That does make sense.

Because, you know, as we talked about it, in the Shadeh episode, no major record labels were too interested in her music as far as when you listened to what was popular in the 80s, she didn't really fall under any of those categorizations, you know, but a Quiet Storm radio station would definitely play her music. Oh, yeah, exactly. You know, as soon as I saw the term Quiet Storm under Shade's, the list of genres that they fall under, I immediately jumped to. her song The Sweetest Taboo, which we played a little bit of last week on our full episode on

Promise. That's one of the singles on that album is The Sweetest Taboo, and part of the lyrics, she uses the term quiet storm. There's a quiet storm, and it never felt like this before. There's a quiet storm. That is you. So do you think she's, I mean, she's obviously. nodding to the genre, right? She's nodding to the genre, or she could be nodding to the Smoky Robinson song. Right.

But, yeah, see, that makes me think, you know, I wonder if she just got lumped into this super genre because in her single, The Sweetest Taboo, she says there's a quiet storm. You know, I mean, she definitely falls under the smooth jazz contemporary R&B category, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you listen to the music, that Chade's backing band

a lot of the melodies and the overall vibes are definitely fall under the quiet storm like slow jam kind of umbrella you know what I mean yeah yeah

but not all of their music does which is why like I mean I agree with you that I wouldn't classify Chade as a quiet storm group you know what I mean but you know So you actually listen to a few tracks

on a quiet storm playlist that that someone put together on Spotify. Right. And it's a lot of it's a lot of I mean they all sound in the same vein as the Smokey Robinson song, you know what I mean?

But it's a lot of that really smooth it's what do you think of when you think of smooth jazz but a lot of times it has you know it's not it's not the cheesy elevator music smooth jazz that you might think of. I mean this is like I guess

the elevator music, smooth jazz is, you know, what you'd call musac, you know what I mean. But this is the origin of that stuff. You know what I mean? A lot of it was from the 70s on this particular playlist, which is, you know, where you would say that it originated from, you know. Yeah, and actually, if you type in Quiet Storm into YouTube, there is hours and hours of really cool, like quote unquote, original Quiet Storm playlist that people have thrown together with all the music that they remember hearing during Melvin Lindsay or Von Harper's Quiet Storm radio segments, which is cool. I mean, the fact that there were radio stations, or at least programs on radio stations

for decades now that have been playing music that would fall under that umbrella, that just tells you how much music, how much jazz music would be classified as Quiet Storm, you know what I mean? There's got to be

hours and hours of content. Yeah, so, um, some classic quiet storm recordings uh, include Frankie Beverly and Mays's golden time of day.

Never heard of that. Marvin Gaze, let's get it on. Everyone knows that song. Yep. Uh, yeah, recordings from Al Green and,

uh, Jill Scott Herron, Barry White and Bill Withers, of course. Yeah, so I've got fond memories of tuning into 107-5, The Oasis, and listening to some quiet storm tunes back in my childhood. So I had to pick a song from, well, I didn't have to. I wanted to. So this sidetrack is really just over the quiet storm.

genre, but I wanted to focus on Smokey Robinson's album that gave Melvin Lindsay the name for a show. And I'm going to go with track two on the album. It's called The Agony and the Ecstasy. What's it on this crazy love? Yeah, I like those background singers that pop up at the end of that clip. And the guitar, the guitar was cool too. That was very, you had to kind of listen for it, but the, guitar in the background was pretty, pretty sweet. Yeah, yeah, it's a good song. I liked it a lot. Again, that is track two on Smokey Robinson's third studio album from 1975 called A Quiet Storm, which spawned Melvin Lindsay's Quiet Storm. Radio Variety Hour. There we go, but it was four hours, apparently.

So this was like the midnight to 4 a.m. type radio program. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Program, right? Yeah. Yep. So what were you, so let's get to the, let's, let's explore this for a little bit. You said that you used to, when you were a kid, you would listen to these quiet storm. What were you doing at 4 a.m? 2, 3 a.m. in the morning.

Were you like lighting candles and shit? Ain't nobody said nothing about me staying up that late. Okay. I don't even remember. If you were a storm radio stations as a kid. Dude, you don't remember. remember listening to that shit? All right, fine.

I lit candles. I drew a bath. Put some sudsy bubbles in there. When you were 12. Yeah, I drank some grape juice. When you were exploring your... In a wine glass. Exploring your body for the first time.

Okay, yeah. Maybe I did tune in to 107-5 during the Quiet Storm segments. Fine. I can't believe you never knew that. No, I knew. What? I always knew when not to bother you. I was like, he obviously, it's like I can hear the music.

I can smell the candles. I'm going to leave Quentin alone for a little bit. Yeah. You think mom and dad knows? How long are we going to keep this bit up is the real question? It's not a bit. It's true. What?

So I have a confession to make brother. Okay. Here's the real reason why I chose this song for this side track. and this is one of my favorite things. Anytime this happens, I'm in ecstasy. As a huge fan of heavily sampled music, nothing delights me more than hearing a song and immediately going, holy motherfucking shit,

this is the original song that they sampled. And this song, The Agony and the Ecstasy by Smokey Robinson, has been sampled in a really delightful tune. One of my favorite chill hop lo-fi artists goes by the name Flamingosis. And he's got a song that shows up on Chill Hop Records compilation album for the spring of 2017. I'll post a link to the band camp page on our show notes. And the song is called Extasy. I wonder where he, where he, where he,

He got the idea to name it that. He must have sampled that song. Parentheses, pay the price, which is also part of the lyrics in this Smoky Robinson song. Anyways, that's going to be our outro for this side track. I'm going to play just a bit of the song by Flamingosis, which is pretty much nothing. But, you know, I think he throws in his own drumbeat, but it's pretty much all just sampled from the Smoky Robinson song. And I love it, dude. It's a delight.

Nice, man. Yeah, it's great. Let's hear it. Yeah, so that's going to do it for us this week. And be sure to hop on to our website, no-filler podcast.com. If you click on the show notes for our Shaday episode, you can see all of our notes. You can see all of our show notes for this sidetrack. And, of course, subscribe to us on iTunes.

subscribe to us on any of the podcast apps that you use. Yeah, that's going to do it for us. Thanks for listening to our sidetrack episode. My name is Quentin. And my name is Travis. We're spinning the only platters that matter here on Quiet Storm, No Filly Radio. And now another no-brainer money-saving tip from Progressive. Marcus, what happened?

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