Motown's Baddest Love Jams [1995-1996]

Today's featured CD series was originally planned to be part of 2015's Summer Slow Jams series. It has been languishing in the Drafts folder until now...

We all have our favorite slow jams. Some might argue that all the slow jams you need from the mighty Motown label can be found within the grooves of Marvin Gaye's 1973 defining classic Let's Get It On. Other folks might find their slow jam of choice among the three volumes of Motown's Baddest Love Jams.

Motown initially promoted Baddest Love Jams alongside their uptempo Funkology series, with each of the series getting their own record in a special 1995 double-LP promo set with the tracklisting pictured on the hype sticker above.

Released circa autumn 1995, Volume 1 of Baddest Love Jams is sub-titled Quiet Storm. Smokey Robinson's same-titled track is credited with launching an entire radio format and kicks off the disc with the nearly eight-minute album cut rather than the four-minute and change single edit. Songwriters Nick Ashford & Valerie Simpson have three songs on the disc including the closer "Silly Wasn't I" sung by Simpson herself. Marvin Gaye's "Distant Lover", a track from the aforementioned Let's Get It On, can also be found on Quiet Storm. Overall, there are two tracks released in the Sixties and another two from the Eighties with the remaining eleven songs all representing the Seventies which is the epicenter of the slow jams canon. After an initial listen that failed to set any sort of continuous flow or mood due to the eighteen-year spread of the recordings, this disc was shelved indefinitely though for a few years early on, it was our only source for the full-length "Quiet Storm".

Volume 2 of Baddest Love Jams was also released near the end of 1995 and is subtitled Fire And Desire for the 1981 Rick James and Teena Marie duet that sets the bar high as track one on the disc. Marvin Gaye returns with  "Please Don't Stay, Once You Go Away", another track from Let's Get It On. The Temptations, Smokey Robinson with and without The Miracles as well as The Miracles sans Smokey, Eddie Kendricks, and Teena Marie all return from the first volume. We have three favorites on this disc though we'd only call "Just To Be Close To You" from the Commodores and "If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight and the Pips' definitive slow jams while Brenda Holloway's achingly beautiful "Every Little Bit Hurts" is the definitive stone-cold break-up song. There are nine songs from the Seventies on Fire And Desire as well as three each from the decades before and after so again it's not the smoothest listen or able to establish the desired mood.

After The Dance, the third and final volume of Baddest Love Jams was released around Valentine's Day 1996. It marked a slight change in format and presentation from the previous two volumes with no songs included from the Sixties nor any tracks from Let's Get It On and the inclusion of four interludes. Marvin Gaye appears with his song "After The Dance" from his 1976 album, I Want You. Smokey Robinson comes to the table with the terrific "Cruisin'" and the disappointing "Ebony Eyes", a duet with Rick James. Rick's former protégé Teena Marie makes her fifth appearance in the series with her deep cut "Irons In the Fire" from 1980. The Jackson 5 are represented with their 1975 single "All I Do Is Think of You" and Stevie Wonder brings his gorgeous "Ribbon In The Sky" from 1982. Volume 3 of Baddest Love Jams is probably the smoothest listen in the bunch but those half-minute interludes, short fades of songs by three then-current Motown artists, are annoying. The fourth interlude, the one that closes the album is a fade of "A Secret Place" by Grover Washington, Jr.