Hughes and Lindsey didn’t speak for a couple of years as Lindsey continued making an impact on radio, buoying a new FM format, breaking new artists and having radio deejays copy his format and style.ĭuring that time Hughes wasn’t doing so bad herself. Then popular WKYS deejay Donnie Simpson told a Washington Post reporter, “Melvin’s coming increases our chances of being number one again.” In 1985, when he decided to move to WKYS again, this time it was for a million-dollar contract at age 30. He would eventually become one of the highest-paid Black radio talents in the country. Within a year of his hosting, The Quiet Storm was number 1 in its time slot.įor nearly a decade at WHUR, Lindsey spent his nights spinning records for his mostly female audience, telling stories with his music and blending eclectic mixes like Roberta Flack’s “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face into Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are.” From his playlists babies were made, fights were forgotten and women offered marriage proposals to Lindsey. The Quiet Storm eventually became a 5-hour nightly show with Lindsey as the host in 1977. When he went to WKYS he ended up in the mailroom, rather than the promotions department and quickly came back to WHUR a few months later, Hughes recalls. Lindsey hadn’t given Hughes the customary two-week resignation. He said, ‘I just want you to know, this will be my last day here…’ I went ballistic.
“I’m thinking he’s gonna have me negotiating for him. “Melvin walked into my office on a Friday and told me that he had been offered this opportunity at WKYS,” Hughes remembers during a recent phone interview. Lindsey was a reluctant convert to broadcasting and Hughes was the reason he was even on the air at all. Hughes, then Cathy Liggins, was livid about his move to their competitor station. Every time he did, the phones would light up non-stop. In 1976, twenty-one-year old Melvin Lindsey had just graduated cum laude with a journalism degree from Howard University and had just begun hosting The Quiet Storm part-time at WHUR. This is the story of how two scrappy young people tapped into talents they didn’t know they had and created a Black music genre that’s a forever mood. But let me take you back to the beginning. For media magnate Cathy Hughes, then WHUR’s station manager, she had created the show’s format-even suggesting the use of the Smokey Robinson song as its title-and the station rose from 20 in ratings to number 3, boosting revenues for the station. The Quiet Storm show had begun in 1976, when Lindsey hosted on WHUR-FM at Howard University and ultimately became the most popular evening program in the District.
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