Forget Black Friday — the late November edition of Record Store Day must have arrived early, because the must-have Boston vinyl of 2022 dropped last weekend (October 28). North Carolina label Yep Roc Records pays homage to one of Boston’s most storied record shops with The Skippy White Story: Boston Soul 1961-1967, a new compilation that strings together the story of sixties soul music and the shop that helped it thrive.
The 15-track record exhumes and honors Skippy White’s layered impact on the genre, which prevails even after the Boston shop’s closure in 2020. Owner Fred LeBlanc didn’t just stock an impressive selection of soul records — he helped release them via his own labels, such as Bluestown, Stop, Silver Cross, and Wild Records. In addition to selections from each label, The Skippy White Story includes unreleased songs from The Precisions and The Lord’s Messengers, although compilation curator Eli Paperboy Reed is partial to The Crayton Singers’ contribution, “Master On High.”
“When it was recorded for Skippy White’s new gospel imprint Silver Cross in 1966, the family group The Crayton Singers had been making noise around Boston for several years,” Reed explains. “I can’t say that this is my favorite track on our new Boston Soul compilation, because I love them all, but it’s high on the list. The combination of garage and gospel makes ‘Master on High’ a singular and unique record, if there ever was one.”
Find it on Side B of the album, or slip back into Boston’s soul scene below.