Quiet Storm

Quiet storm is a radio format and a subgenre of contemporary R&B music that is characterized by understated, mellow dynamics, slow tempos, and relaxed rhythms. It was pioneered in the mid-1970s by Melvin Lindsey, while he was an intern at the radio station WHUR-FM in Washington, D.C.. This style of R&B music was named after Smokey Robinson's 1976 single "Quiet Storm".

Quiet storm later became a blanket term for mellow or soulful slow jams and smooth jazz of the sort played by radio programs influenced by Melvin Lindsey's format.

According to music journalist Jason King, quiet storm developed as a subgenre analogous to soft rock because it emphasized the more tender qualities of R&B:

Ben Fong-Torres of Rolling Stone called the genre a "blend of pop, jazz fusion, and R&B ballads--all elegant and easy-flowing, like a flute of Veuve Clicquot champagne".

Melvin Lindsey, a student at Howard University, with his classmate Jack Shuler, was first a disc jockey for WHUR in 1976 as stand-ins for an employee who failed to report for work. The response from listeners was positive, and Lindsey stayed on. Founder of Radio One Cathy Hughes, WHUR station manager, heard of the show's positive reception and responded by giving Lindsey and Shuler their own show.

After a time, the strains of "A Quiet Storm," Robinson's popular recording, became Lindsey's theme music and introduced his time slot every night thereafter. "The Quiet Storm" was four hours of melodically soulful music that provided an intimate, laid-back mood tailor-made 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 listener-ship adopted a similar format for its graveyard slot. In the New York tri-state late night market Vaughn Harper D.J'd the quiet storm graveyard program for WBLS-FM which he helmed for 35 years until being released from the station in 2008. Melvin Lindsey died of AIDS in 1992, but the "Quiet Storm" format he originated remains a staple in radio programming today, more than 40 years after its inception.

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