11/12/26 19:01:49.00 zFGxkw9Q
Some twenty years plus after the emergence of the 33-rpm long-playing format,
artists began experimenting with longer recordings
that often features self-contained themes examined over the course of the entire album.
This was a concept that Album Oriented Rock (AOR) exploited to its fullest commercial potential
with groups like Led Zeppelin and The Eagles.
Marvin Gaye was the first black artist to embrace this concept with large commercial success
with his 1971 recording What's Going On,
though Isaac Hayes's groundbreaking Hot Buttered Soul charted this territory with some success among black audiences
before Gaye's crossover success.
These changes in popular music represented the first opportunities for black artists
to experiment with improvisation and arrangement outside of the gene of jazz
and partially ended the reign of the 45-rpm recording as the only viable commercial format for popular music.
Hayes's eighteen-minute reworking of Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix,"
and Donny Hathaway 's gospel-tinged recording of Bobby Scott's "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," from Donny Hathaway (1970)
are two of the best examples of this new creative terrain for black artists.
Though neither attracted mainstream appeal ―
Hayes commercial breakthrough occurred with the soundtrack to Shaft and Hathaway 's only mainstream success occurs
with pop-soul duets with Roberta Flack ―
these recordings laid the foundation for the later artistic achievements of Flack, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Barry White.
It was in this context that Robinson made his own self-contained suite of romance recordings in 1975.