In the midst of widespread hedonism and hyper-sexuality Love Unlimited sang haunting songs about long-standing relationships. The one that gets me every time is “I Can’t Let Him Down,” a rapturous ode to romantic fidelity. With its propulsive rhythm, soaring vocals, melancholy strings, and slightly subdued blues-guitar licks, “I Can’t Let Him Down” completely embodies the group’s signature sound, which combined the pop luster of disco with the earthiness of Motown and soul-jazz. It was a sound that worked quite well for up-tempo songs, but achieved perfection with the slow burn.

Barry White, the group’s producer, favored long melodic lines and impeccably tight, superhuman harmonies. But White also understood, perhaps more than any other producer of his day, that black music must always have a deep and heavy groove. Along with James Brown, White remains one of the most frequently sampled artists in hip-hop precisely because his music is incredibly bass-driven, especially at slower tempos—the perfect sonic backdrop to cruising in a Cadillac, an activity not uncommon in White’s South Los Angeles neighborhood then or now. Through his work with Love Unlimited White gave us some of the most rollicking, hard-hitting ballads of the so-called disco era, most notably the utterly sublime “I Belong to You,” delivered with such incredible warmth and anguish by lead vocalist Glodean James, who never hit a wrong note in her life.

Although he is closely associated with disco in the public imagination, White never abandoned the aesthetics of his soul music predecessors; he merely adapted them to fit a changing music scene. His lush, atmospheric production is unmistakably polished and modern, but the songs he wrote for Love Unlimited speak to the spiritual enchantment found through romantic love. In another context they could easily be songs about Jesus. He’s all of I’ve got. I Belong to You. I Can’t Let Him Down. Here are the lyrics to the latter:

There’s nothing out there in the streets,
Nothing that I want
He gives me the love I need
To make sure that I don’t
Most men’s thing is playing games
And that I sure don’t need
There’s only one man in my life
And he’s enough for me
Yes, I’m his girl
And he’s my world
I can’t let him down [no!]…

In each song Love Unlimited seem to be affirming passionate, single-minded devotion to a lover. In a way it is a kind of feminine rejoinder to the male-centered soul of Marvin Gaye, which attempted to celebrate the redemptive power of sexual ecstasy. Love Unlimited celebrate the redemptive power of monogamy. There’s nothing frivolous or fleeting about love in their songs. It is fixed. There’s no shopping around for something better, no wavering, no caught-in-the-middle ménage à trois nonsense. Love is not a marketplace. It is an enduring spiritual pact. It means, above all, as the above passage illustrates, that one has a responsibility to another human being. Can anything be more antithetical to mainstream attitudes toward relationships today? I’m starting to realize why no one remembers Love Unlimited.

But that is not all. I don’t mean to give the impression that the group celebrated slavish obedience to men. One of their finest songs is “I’m So Glad That I’m a Woman,” a bouncy number in honor of social freedom and possibility. In one verse they upset the sociological cliches used to explain black American life: “In the morning when I wake up, as I comb my hair / I can hear my daddy saying, ‘It’s a great big world out there.’ / While putting on my make-up, his words linger in the air / ‘Just use what your God gave you, and you can make it anywhere.’” Imagine that: three, full-figured brown-skinned women singing about how lucky they are! Not cursed, not downtrodden, not lonely. “I know I’ve got it made,” they sing, “no, I wouldn’t trade.” Take that Moynihan.

The song—from its disco beat to its lighthearted, optimistic tone—represents the peculiarities of a certain historical moment. In the 1970s Black men and women born in the 1950s were reaping the benefits of the Civil Rights Movement, earning college degrees and entering the workforce—in short, joining the American middle-class. Love Unlimited made music for these educated, upwardly mobile black women from the chocolate cities, women who, unlike their white counterparts, were not anxious to loosen the manacles of middle-class respectability but were instead anxious to “have it made.” That meant, for many of them, having a good job, a good social life, and, perhaps most importantly given their very traditional upbringings, a good man (or as the women of Love Unlimited put it, “a high steppin’, hip dressin’ fella,” who’s “really got it together”). It meant two sophisticated adults falling in love. This is partly what elevates Love Unlimited above so much disco tripe. The sweet smell of success was in the air, but they encouraged a generation to define ultimate success in spiritual terms as opposed to material ones. “I did it all for love,” they exclaim on the opening song to their masterpiece He’s All I’ve Got.

Which, of course, underscores other reasons why Love Unlimited have been forgotten. They were not a crossover act. Unlike Motown their music did not appeal to teenyboppers and there is no white romanticism or nostalgia associated with their particular historical moment. People laugh at the flamboyance of the 1970s and admire the radicalism and modishness of the 1960s. So just because you like Motown and The Supremes does not mean that you will be a fan of Love Unlimited, whose music is, properly speaking, a forerunner of adult contemporary and Quiet Storm. For those of us raised by single-black women it is music redolent of beauty salons, department stores, and quiet, leisurely Sunday afternoons after church. It fits comfortably alongside the music of Phyllis Hyman, Stephanie Mills, and Deniece Williams, singers who gave voice, in their art and in their lives, to many black women’s troubles and enduring hopes as the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement came to a grinding halt in the Reagan ’80s. In other words, this is music for people who still cherish the myth of romance, people who still believe that it is possible to love someone other than oneself. I’m talking about suffocating, voracious, all-consuming love. This music is not cynical or hip. It is not cute. It is black commercial art at its finest. If you’re like me, when you hear it you’ll have to stop yourself from constantly lamenting the fact that they sure as hell don’t make ‘em like they used to.