Happy 50th Anniversary to Minnie Riperton’s second studio album Perfect Angel, originally released August 9, 1974.
Well, who is this little sweetheart in her blue denim overalls? The twinkles on her earrings match the twinkles in her eyes, while streaks of summer-softened ice cream in her hand race for her elbow. This ebony moppet Mona Lisa—with her mischievous smile—is Minnie Riperton. The specific purity captured in this Barry Feinstein cover shot also saturates the music of her serendipitous commercial breakthrough Perfect Angel.
On this sophomore stunner, Riperton concerns herself only with ecstasy and frivolity to render a triumph of utopian folk-soul. It was this record that introduced the world to her five-octave soprano via the unforgettable #1 hit “Lovin’ You.” Before that made her a household name, however, the Chicago native had paid a decade of dues.
As a teen, she split her time as a receptionist at the famed Chess Records and member of girl group The Gems who harmonized behind Fontella Bass, Etta James, The Dells, and others. Despite recording a smattering of singles, it wasn’t until Riperton joined ragtag rock act Rotary Connection that her talent attracted real attention. It also attracted a husband.
Once songwriter Richard Rudolph met Riperton, it was love at first sight. By the time her Rotary tenure was up, she and Rudolph were married, parents of one son Marc, and penning her solo debut Come to My Garden (1970) with Charles Stepney. While that gorgeous orchestral set spawned the hippie-fantastic “Les Fleur,” the album went largely unnoticed.
So, in search of sunshine and a change of pace, Riperton and Rudolph relocated their young interracial family to Gainesville, Florida where they birthed daughter Maya. They left music, but it wouldn’t leave them. Rotary Connection fan Steve Slutzah, now working for Epic Records, tracked them down in “the Sunshine state” through someone who knew Rudolph worked at a local radio station. On the rear LP jacket, Riperton thanks Slutzah for driving “through the swamp to find me.” Epic signed her on the strength of a four-song demo and soon, the whole family relocated to Los Angeles. When asked which producer she wanted, she took a moonshot: Stevie Wonder.
Wonder wouldn’t be the easiest get. He was in the middle of a legendary hotstreak that would see him winning Album of the Year GRAMMYs thrice consecutively with Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974), and Songs in the Key of Life (1976). While crafting the second of those, Riperton asked him to helm her project and he responded immediately in the affirmative. That day, she applied her voice to his “It Ain’t No Use,” also shadowing him on “Creepin’.” Their connection was magical, but put him at odds with his Motown Records contract.
Listen to the Album:
To circumvent their legal leverage, Wonder produced, arranged and played on Perfect Angel pseudonymously. Rudolph dubbed Wonder “El Toro Negro,” as in his Black Bull Music company and a notable “Superwoman” lyric from 1972’s Talking Book (“Mary wants to be a superwoman / And try to boss the bull around”). Similarly, Scorbu Productions was a portmanteau of their zodiac representatives: scorpion and bull. The ruse proved fruitful.
Perfect Angel begins with “Reasons.” This first song sets the tone for something very different than the stately sound of Come to My Garden. Here, she leans into hard-swung funk-rock. As it fades, she chirps an arresting mimicry of Marlo Henderson’s electric guitar solo that sounds like an inhuman cross between falling artillery and mad villainy. Despite its originality, it fizzled as a single. The same fate befell the rollicking, percussive bustle of “Seeing You This Way.” It seemed Perfect Angel might join its predecessor in obscurity until Riperton and Rudolph became aware of the enchanting effect a certain ballad had on their live audiences.
“We saw this amazing thing happen to these people,” Rudolph detailed to Okayplayer in 2019. “People started moving closer to each other and putting their arms around each other[…]. Minnie looked back at me and I looked at her and asked, ‘Do you see this? This is crazy.’ We came back and said to the label, ‘You’ve got to put this out.’”
The disarmingly sparse lullaby-turned-love-song “Lovin’ You” subsisted wholly on glimmering electric piano, acoustic strums, and mockingbird trills from an actual mockingbird. Epic was reluctant to issue it, preferring to market her as an R&B artist. Upon its January 1975 release, reception was phenomenal. It topped the Billboard Hot 100, towing Perfect Angel to #1 on the US Billboard R&B Albums. Its gold sales even spurred Chess to re-press Come to My Garden for a new influx of Minnie interest. These victories validated her belief in music’s universality.
“Because I'm a Black woman, everyone thinks I should sing the Blues,” Riperton once explained. “But I have nothing to be blue about…I’m not into feeling sad. I’m a happy person.” Perhaps that’s why her mournful 1966 single “Lonely Girl,” though beautifully sung, seems disembodied compared to Perfect Angel. What informs the expectation that suffering and sadness should pair with Blackness? One should ask what transpired in the world for joy to be considered antithetical to the Black experience, but that’s an essay for a different day. It suffices that her glowing optimism was allowed to shine on, irrespective of skin shade. Riperton’s happiness was colorless.
Few songs typify this like the Wonder-penned title tune. Beaming with sunny electric piano chords, tickering drums, and muted guitar plucks, it invites you to forget for three minutes that bills are due, and let Riperton’s rope-skipping gaiety own the moment. Channeling all the sass of a baby girl with her hair freshly greased and partitioned into barretted braids, she sings, “My mama told me / If I was goody / That I would find me / Someone to love me and I… / I think you are the perfect angel!” Meanwhile, backing vocals nyah-nyah like a playground taunt designed to get the boy she likes to chase her a little bit. The distractions are so fun, no one cares that she never uses her whistle.
Another Stevie gift, “Take a Little Trip,” could easily belong to Innervisions with its psychedelic implications over labile jazz movement (“Too High”), righteous accountability (“Jesus Children of America”), and introspective lyrics about mindsight (“Visions”). But Riperton owns it fully waiting until the very end to add a D6 climax that few other sopranos could duplicate. A 2017 deluxe remaster adds several extended and alternate takes including “Take a Little Trip” as a duet with Wonder.
Apart from the aforementioned two, Riperton and Rudolph penned the whole LP themselves. They keep their positivity from cloying by never hewing to a predictable R&B sound. “It’s So Nice (To See Old Friends)” gets a country tinge courtesy of slide guitar from Sneaky Pete Kleinow and seems to converse with The Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Whereas, “The Edge of a Dream” draws reverent gospel energy from the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Click/tap the image below to explore our Minnie Riperton readers’ poll results:
Only on “Every Time He Comes Around” does Riperton dip any more than ankle-deep into sensuality (“I ain’t lookin’ for a man to hold me hold me for an hour / And I ain’t lookin’ for a man to love me for a day / Every time he comes around / I get that funny feeling / What I’m looking for don’t matter anyway”). Though Riperton uses her upper register extensively throughout the disc, the haunting theremin-esque backgrounds here were performed by Wonderlove alumna Deniece Williams. Finally, “Our Lives” draws Perfect Angel to a satisfying close with Wonder’s immediately recognizable harmonica functioning as his lone “cameo.”
Without resting on laurels, the songbird recorded Adventures in Paradise (1975) only months after “Lovin’ You” made its impact. Though Wonder was too occupied with Songs in the Key of Life to contribute, his endorsement of her work and the public’s reception to it made her a legend. After Riperton’s passing in 1979, Michael Jackson, Patrice Rushen, Peabo Bryson, Roberta Flack, and of course, Wonder rushed to help Rudolph finish her final recording, Love Lives Forever (1980).
Prior to Riperton, perhaps only Yma Sumac was known for such range. Today, Shanice Wilson, Betty Wright, Chanté Moore, Sy Smith, Ariana Grande, and Mariah Carey have thoroughly acclimated the world to whistle singing. Even men like Adam Lopez have demonstrated the ability. Invariably, they were all students and children of Minnie Riperton.
Speaking of children, the daughter she used to “la la la la la” and “doot’n doo” to grew up to be Saturday Night Live actress and comedienne Maya Rudolph (Riperton croons her name lovingly in the final refrain of “Lovin’ You”). “I always had a sense that my mom was doing something different and special,” she offered in 2019. “Because I saw how people responded to her. Her energy just had something to it that made people so happy.”
Now each time she hosts SNL, she recreates one of her mother’s iconic images. In 2021, she tributed the Perfect Angel cover donning blue denim and a twinkling smile with ice cream dripping across her fingertips. The homage is poignant. History repeats itself, and once again, happiness wins.
Want to learn more about Minnie Riperton’s Perfect Angel? Enjoy Mark Chappelle discussing the album at length during his recent guest appearance on the Catch That! podcast with The R&B Representers.
Listen: