“There was a saying that if you came into the store, and you wanted a record but you didn't know the name of it, all you had to do was just hum it.”
Long before streaming service algorithms fed our appetites for new sounds, music lovers relied on radio DJs and record shopkeepers like Skippy White.
But White lifted the needle on his six-decade brick-and-mortar career in 2020 and moved his massive inventory to a warehouse. “Even that wasn't big enough to hold everything,” he recalled. “So when I finally closed the last store and ended that chapter in my history, I had to bring a lot of records home.”
Some artists even auditioned for White at his Mass. Ave. shop. He remembers when Alvin Hankerson heard twangy blues coming through an outdoor speaker and went inside. The musician told White he sang like that too, and had written some original material. Then Hankerson ran home to grab his guitar and came back to perform a few songs. Impressed, White even came up with a novel artist name for Hankerson.
A revival of re-releases from other vintage soul scenes in cities like Seattle, Washington and Madison, Wisconsin really lit Reed's fire. “I was like, 'man, if they can put out records in these kinds of far-flung places there should be a compilation of soul records and gospel records from Boston.'”got on board to share the story of Boston soul, R&B and gospel with a wider audience.
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