Some records don’t just play through the speakers—they spill right out of the heart. Reggie LaVelle’s “Let Me Be The One” is one of those late-night confessions, a velvet-smooth plea whispered through Rhodes chords, sax swells, and the kind of honesty that only comes after midnight.

The track finds LaVelle in rare form—half-hopeful, half-heartbroken—as he steps into the shadows of a love already spoken for. His voice doesn’t compete with the other man; it lingers in the quiet spaces where loneliness grows. Each lyric is a candle in the dark: “If your voice shake, I’ll hold the note… If your hands tired, I’ll row the boat…”

Listeners say this record feels less like a song and more like an unmailed letter, sealed with the ache of patience. Reggie doesn’t beg for ownership—he begs for the honor of being the one who’s still there when the silence closes in. It’s not the sound of winning someone over; it’s the sound of holding on until they remember.

Released in 1972 on Beggin’ For Love, “Let Me Be The One” cemented Reggie LaVelle’s reputation as Soul Cup’s smoothest midnight operator—a man who could turn unspoken feelings into chart-ready poetry. It remains one of the label’s most whispered-about records, a track that moves like a secret through back rooms, jukeboxes, and broken hearts.

💿 Sometimes love ain’t about taking—it’s about waiting. And on this record, Reggie LaVelle waits with a groove you’ll never forget.

From Whisper to Anthem: The Story Behind the Song

Ask anyone who ever worked a late shift at Soul Cup FM, and they’ll tell you: there was a season in Detroit when the night felt like a living thing. That was the year Reggie LaVelle turned a hallway whisper into an anthem—a quiet storm of patience and promise. Before the single had a catalog number, before the lacquer cooled on the test pressings, the engineers were already calling it the “waitlight record,” because it kept a light on for somebody somewhere who wasn’t ready to come home yet.

Reggie wrote the bones of it on a diner napkin after a set at The Blue Velvet, a club where the smoke curled slow and the jukebox knew your secrets. He’d watched a woman at the bar trace circles in a water ring, smiling whenever her man’s name came up and then blinking fast like she was hiding the sting. Reggie was the kind of singer who carried other people’s stories around until he could sing them free. That night, the line came in one piece: “Let me be the one you call… when the silence gets too loud.” It wasn’t a threat or a temptation; it was a promise to pick up the phone on the first ring.

Quiet Storm Before the Storm

Long before programmers started calling it “Quiet Storm,” Soul Cup Records had a habit of pressing records that glowed like night-lights. This cut sits right in that lineage—softly electric, gently relentless. The Rhodes trembles like a heartbeat. A breathy sax leaves trails across the room. And under it all, the rhythm section plays like a ceiling fan: steady enough to sleep to, strong enough to move the air when the heat won’t break. It’s music for anyone who’s ever waited for the latch to click, for the knock at the door, for a second chance at love after the first chance cracked in half.

That’s why the song keeps showing up on “get back together” playlists, wedding after-parties, and 2 a.m. radio dedications. If you’ve typed songs to win back your ex or music for heartbreak healing into a search bar at an ungodly hour, you’ve already been inside this song. It’s not about stealing someone from someone else; it’s about keeping their worth in the room while they remember it for themselves.

Studio B, Light Low

The final take was captured in Studio B with the lights turned down to amber. The tape operator says you could hear the floorboards sigh when Reggie leaned into the mic. He cut the lead vocal in one go, then asked everyone to leave the room for ten minutes. When the band came back, he’d written the small call-and-response asides—the near-whispered echoes that feel like the conscience of the song. (I still remember…) (I’ll be your shelter…) The engineer kept them in the far left channel on the first mix, like a friend talking to you from the next barstool over.

There are little fingerprints all over the arrangement: a harp gliss that lifts the pre-chorus like a pocket prayer; a soft organ lift that lets the chorus land without grabbing; conga and rimshot details that make the groove feel like the pulse of a sleep-deprived city. Nothing here is accidental, and nothing here shouts. It’s that Soul Cup magic—restraint that still sweats.

What the Night DJs Know

DJ Butter Brown has a habit of dropping the record at exactly the moment the city exhales. On a rainy Wednesday, he’ll segue into it after a station ID and let the vinyl crackle roll across the room. “This one’s for the ones who keep a key under the mat,” he’ll say, and somewhere an argument softens. Somewhere else, a phone stops ringing and starts being answered. Butter swears he’s pulled this cut in and out of the Quiet Storm Playlist a dozen times and every time the phone lines light up like a switchboard in a love story.

Some songs tell you what to do. This one tells you what to be. Be the call that’s easy to make. Be the porch light that never goes out. Be the shelter while the rain finishes making its point. That’s a different kind of love song—one that invites patience instead of possession, devotion instead of drama. The city remembers those longer.

Letters, Dedications, Second Chances

We keep a file in the Soul Cup office marked “LaVelle—LM1—TESTIMONIALS.” Inside are napkins, postcards, and the kind of folded notebook paper that survives laundromats and cross-country buses. One says, in blue ballpoint, “Played this the night she finally came home.” Another, on motel stationery, reads, “He forgot my birthday. I forgot to lock the door. This song remembered for both of us.” It turns out that people in love—and people in the wreckage right before love—don’t need complicated instructions. They need a melody that knows how to wait without moving on.

We’ve watched it work at diners, on front stoops, and through cheap transistor radios with the antenna half broken. If you need a song for a last-chance drive through a sleeping city, if you’re practicing how to say “I still love you” without tripping over the words, if you’re curating a playlist for the moment before a second first kiss—this is that track.

How to Hear It Right

There’s no wrong way to spin this one, but there are a few favored methods around the label. The audiophiles will say to warm the tubes first, drop the needle carefully, and let the first chorus breathe before you dim the lights. The pragmatists stream it on a loop while they write texts they’ll rewrite twice more before sending. The romantics play it quiet in the kitchen, letting the sax drift down the hallway like incense. However you play it, play it all the way through. The last lines—“I was always ready to catch you. Always.”—are the soft landing the whole song has been promising since bar one.

Why It Belongs to Soul Cup

Soul Cup Records was built on a strange and beautiful contradiction: music bold enough for the street but tender enough for the living room. Reggie’s cut is a charter document for that mission. It lives in the same city as the rougher, rowdier joints on our roster, but it occupies a different hour of the night. The hour when contrition sounds better than confession, when the apology comes without alibis, when the radio light makes a halo on the ceiling and you realize that the future might be soft if you let it be.

Put it next to our other late-night signatures in your rotation; let it sit between the rain-streaked ballads and the candleflame instrumentals. It will do what it’s always done—hold space. For you, for them, for the version of us that can love without keeping score.

For the Searchers at 2 A.M.

If you found this page by typing something like best love songs for second chances or quiet storm songs for getting back together or even how to say I still love you without saying it—welcome. You’re in the right place. Let this record carry what your voice can’t yet. Let it be the background while you draft that message. Let it be the nudge that gets a door opened from the inside. Some tracks sizzle; this one stays. That’s why it keeps finding new listeners every year, every city, every complicated human trying to be brave in a gentle way.

Credits

• Artist: Reggie LaVelle
• Song Title: Let Me Be The One
• Album: Beggin’ For Love
• Year: 1972 © Soul Cup Records