For over 40 years, the Quiet Storm radio format has been such an institution in black music, we rarely give it thought. It’s just something that’s always been there, like old ladies’ church candy in purses – you don’t consider where it came from or why. But the Quiet Storm is an anomaly in radio, especially urban radio; a swiftly changing landscape over the last 30 years which has seen format changes, programming limitations, the growth of satellite, plus shifts to streaming. Yet this format remains consistent.
The smooth R&B programming starting in 1976 and came to prominence in the mid-80s, breaking artists including Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, and Sade, and establishing hit-makers like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and LA Reid and Babyface. It was an alternative to funk, disco, and boogie that also gifted “old-school” R&B artists with the extended careers that classic rock artists enjoyed.
Black folks know, sonically and culturally, what the Quiet Storm means, even if they can’t easily describe it. 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. It’s the distinctive, airy and jazzy music beds behind those voices. The sensuous, romantic mid-tempos and ballads. But the story of how the format started and why it became so popular gets lost. 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.
