Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Boston's Skippy White's CDs and Records to close by the end of the Year
I have tinnitus. I leave the radio running all night. Boston's WBZ has a good non-political late night talk show. I listened to it last night -- actually, early this morning. The store's owner, Skippy White, talked about the record business and the sadness of the demise of one more think that I always took for granted.
Here's a story from 2015 about Skippy White and his store.
NEWS
Meet the septuagenarian who introduced R&B and hip hop to Boston
We talked to Skippy White about retirement, race and records.
By Danny McDonald | Published : March 31, 2015
Skippy White, in his record store.NICOLAUS CZARNECKI/METRO
Skippy White, in his record store.NICOLAUS CZARNECKI/METRO
Skippy White is surrounded by the clutter of his life’s work. A Prince album here. An Aretha Franklin live album there. A particularly worn Led Zeppelin II sits atop a heap of other records, near stacks of gospel cassettes. Cardboard boxes are everywhere.
At 78, he’s the city’s oldest record store owner. He’s been running his own shop for 54 years. White’s life has been defined by music — he was the first deejay in Boston to play R&B records in the early 1960s, he said, and the first to sell hip hop records in the city. He doesn’t have any hobbies. This space — Skippy White’s CDs and Records in Roxbury’s Egleston Square — is his life.
It’s also a bit of a mess. Some of the records are alphabetized. Some are not. There doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason to the organization, he’s told. He shrugs.
“A lot of the people who come in and are looking for vinyl would rather go through a mixed box because you never know what you’re going to find,” said White, whose given name is Fred. “They’d actually prefer it that way.”
....
A generation later, in 1979, he was at the forefront of bringing another genre to the local masses. White was the first to sell The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” locally, meaning he could be considered to be the man who physically brought hip hop to Boston. He remembers selling out of the first 50 copies in about one day.
That was more than 35 years ago. Nowadays, surviving as a record store owner in the age of Spotify and other digital music services is a challenge, he concedes. The people who walk into his store can usually be separated into two groups: old luddites who don’t want to use a computer to find and download music or young hipsters who fetishize vinyl.
....
Meet the septuagenarian who introduced R&B and hip hop to Boston
We talked to Skippy White about retirement, race and records.
By Danny McDonald | Published : March 31, 2015
Skippy White, in his record store.NICOLAUS CZARNECKI/METRO
Skippy White, in his record store.NICOLAUS CZARNECKI/METRO
Skippy White is surrounded by the clutter of his life’s work. A Prince album here. An Aretha Franklin live album there. A particularly worn Led Zeppelin II sits atop a heap of other records, near stacks of gospel cassettes. Cardboard boxes are everywhere.
At 78, he’s the city’s oldest record store owner. He’s been running his own shop for 54 years. White’s life has been defined by music — he was the first deejay in Boston to play R&B records in the early 1960s, he said, and the first to sell hip hop records in the city. He doesn’t have any hobbies. This space — Skippy White’s CDs and Records in Roxbury’s Egleston Square — is his life.
It’s also a bit of a mess. Some of the records are alphabetized. Some are not. There doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason to the organization, he’s told. He shrugs.
“A lot of the people who come in and are looking for vinyl would rather go through a mixed box because you never know what you’re going to find,” said White, whose given name is Fred. “They’d actually prefer it that way.”
....
A generation later, in 1979, he was at the forefront of bringing another genre to the local masses. White was the first to sell The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” locally, meaning he could be considered to be the man who physically brought hip hop to Boston. He remembers selling out of the first 50 copies in about one day.
That was more than 35 years ago. Nowadays, surviving as a record store owner in the age of Spotify and other digital music services is a challenge, he concedes. The people who walk into his store can usually be separated into two groups: old luddites who don’t want to use a computer to find and download music or young hipsters who fetishize vinyl.
....
