Both the albums below are available on a single CD release by EMI in 2004.
You can buy this CD here: Perfect Angel / Adventures in paradise
‘Perfect Angel’
Was her second studio album released on August 9, 1974 by Epic Records. The album contains the biggest hit of Riperton’s career, “Lovin’ You”.
Produced by the great Stevie Wonder but not credited due to possible legal issues between his Motown label and Epic who released this album, he was credited under a pseudonym name of El Toro Negro.
Riperton recorded Perfect Angel at the Record Plant in LA, Stevie Wonder was a big fan of Riperton and his choice of studio’s on the West Coast.
Perfect Angel was a musical romp through rock (“Reasons”), easy-going pop (“Seeing You This Way”) with a wonderful message song that closed out side one (“On The Edge Of a Dream” – written in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.). Wonder wrote the title tune as well as “Take a Little Trip”.
At the end of production, there were eight completed songs; Wonder wanted one additional song to bring the album closer to the industry standard of a 40-minute run time. He asked Riperton and songwriter-husband Richard Rudolph to come up with a tune that they considered to be their “most embarrassing song”. With hesitation, Riperton did mention a lullaby she sang to her daughter Maya to put her to sleep at night so that she and Rudolph could spend “grown-up time”.[6] With Rudolph’s help, Riperton eventually created “Lovin’ You” from that lullaby, and the song was quickly recorded with Wonder on electric piano and synthesizers. Rudolph supplied the chirping birds from a sound effects reel.
‘Adventures in paradise’
After “Lovin’ You” and Perfect Angel finished their chart run, Epic wanted a follow-up disc. With previous co-producer Stevie Wonder busy recording his Songs in the Key of Life (which Minnie would also turn up on singing backup on “Ordinary Pain”), Minnie and husband Richard Rudolph hired Stewart Levine to co-produce her next album. More songs came from the Riperton/Rudolph camp as well as collaborations with Jazz Crusader Joe Sample and songwriter Leon Ware (who was enjoying a hot streak thanks to his work on Marvin Gaye’s album I Want You). Guitarist Larry Carlton was brought in as an arranger. The result, Adventures In Paradise, took on a mellow soul-jazz tone.
The album’s best known song is the sensual “Inside My Love”. Riperton made it quite clear during the track’s initial release that the song wasn’t about a woman asking a man to have sex with her – it was about going deeper than that, attaining true intimacy.
“Love and its Glory” was never a hit, but it is an epic love song of two teens struggling to be together, despite parental objections. The girl in the song is named Maya, which is the name of Riperton’s daughter.The album was a standard recording but available in two formats: quadraphonic and stereo.