|
Sam Sniderman,Sam the Record Man R.I.P.
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Coxx |
Sam The Record Man founder Sam Sniderman is seen in his famous Yonge St. store with his son
Jason in this 1999 photo. Sniderman died Sept. 23, 2012, at the age of 92.
| quote: | Sam “The Record Man” Sniderman, whose name graced Toronto’s Mecca for music lovers and who helped unknown Canadian musicians make their marks in music history, died Sunday. He was 92.
• Sam Sniderman photos http://www.thestar.com/ajax/photoplayer/1261269
Sniderman was best known for his family business, Sam The Record Man, which thrived at 347 Yonge St. for four decades and spawned 130 other retail locations across Canada. A landmark in downtown Toronto, the store’s neon glow and graffiti-crusted walls became things of lore in the Toronto music scene when the company shut down in 2007. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit.../article/219612
Sniderman’s passion for spreading Canadian music started in his youth; he began selling records out of his brother’s radio shop in 1937 at the age of 17. Sniderman’s family fostered the young man’s love for music, eventually changing the name of their College St. store, Snider Radio Sales, to Sam The Record Man in the mid 1950s.
In 1961, Sam The Record Man moved to its iconic Yonge St. location. It was there that the legendary music vault became a musicians’ hangout. It was the place to be on Boxing Day, with a multitude of gimmicks and giveaways, and for midnight record releases. Indeed, the 40,000 square foot library of LPs, 45s, reel-to-reels, eight-tracks, cassettes and CDs quickly became one of Toronto’s defining landmarks.
But his knowledge of obscure records, the self-financed ones recorded in basements and garages by unknown bands, were The Record Man’s mark of expertise. Sniderman could dig up even the strangest album out of 400,000 titles for a diehard fan who walked into his shop.
“Sometimes I got stumped. But more often than not, you could ask me for the most obscure record on the planet and I would disappear for a few minutes and come back with it in my hands,” Sniderman told the Star in 2001.
“Somebody once tried to catch me by asking for a recording of war music played by U-Boat crews in attack mode during World War II. I found it.”
Besides running a national chain of music stores, Sniderman may be best known for lobbying to create a stronger Canadian music scene in the 1960s, when he tried to establish an all-Canadian recording company.
Sometimes called the Godfather of Canadian Music, Sniderman helped kick-start the careers of many Canadian music greats, including The Guess Who, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. At one time or another, they all took refuge on the cushy sofa in Sniderman’s office. There, they shared their fears; Sniderman listened.
“Everybody sat there at some point,” Sniderman said. “The Guess Who were there when they couldn’t get a record made. Anne Murray sat there saying: ‘Sam, if this record doesn’t work, I’m going back to Nova Scotia to be a gym teacher’.”
Sniderman always gave his expert advice, and often money out of his own pocket, to help emerging Canadian artists catch their first big break.
“He was a mentor to literally hundreds of Canadian artists and musicians, and the Yonge St. record store and Sam’s presence there was the centre of the Canadian music industry’s universe for over three decades,” said Brian Robertson, a close family friend and chairman emeritus of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
Declining CD sales, competition from stores like HMV and Wal-Mart, and Internet downloads gradually skewed the rules of the music industry in the 1990s. Sales withered. Sniderman had to file for bankruptcy and closed the store in December of 2001.
“It is no fun at all these days. It’s really not,” Sniderman said of the music industry at the time. “If I was going to sell something, it might as well be refrigerators. The business has changed; the excitement just isn’t there.”
In 2002, his sons Bobby and Jason re-opened the store, but the losses kept adding up. In 2007, they sold Sam The Record Man in Toronto to Ryerson University. The building was levelled and will be replaced with a new student centre in years to come.
The Sam The Record Man sign, two enormous LPs made of 800 neon lights, was last lit at a Nuit Blanche installation in 2008. Ryerson University paid $150,000 to have the sign dismantled piece by piece before the site’s demolition. To remember the iconic store and its big-hearted Record Man, the sign will hang again in the Ryerson building once it is completed.
Sniderman’s achievements earned him the Order of Canada 1976. He was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997.
Sniderman was born in 1920 in Toronto and lived in Kensington Market. He attended Harbord Collegiate.
His family said a service will be held Tuesday.
With files from Debra Black, Vidya Kauri, Mitch Potter and The Canadian Press
|
R.I.P. Sam |
|
|
| kotsy |
:(
| quote: | Originally posted @ http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/art...n-sign-in-limbo
Sam the Record Man sign in limbo
 While Sam the Record Man’s legacy in the Canadian music scene lives on, the physical legacy — that massive glowing sign that adorned Yonge St. for more than four decades — is in limbo.
The 800-light, 384-square-foot sign announcing “Sam” — above two giant LPs whose lit tubes made the records appear to spin — was designated a heritage element when the property was sold to Ryerson University in 2007.
The university is still bound to restore the sign and install it in a new student centre being built in the same location, after the building is completed in 2015, Ryerson president Sheldon Levy said in an interview following the death of retail legend Sam Sniderman.
The contract also allows the university to install the sign on an adjacent building.
The sign hasn’t been seen in public since it was last lit at Nuit Blanche in 2008.
According to the university, the sign was professionally dismantled, crated and put in storage.
“It was a sign that was totally falling apart,” said Levy. “We are obligated at the moment to repair the sign or to take it out of the warehouse and to put it back together.”
But with an estimated $250,000 price tag for reinstalling the sign, the university has been seeking an alternative.
“We wanted to discuss with the city alternatives to doing that, that we thought would better commemorate the sign and recognize the importance of Sam’s to the City of Toronto,” Levy said.
Alternative ideas include creating a walkway of vinyl records in the sidewalk outside the property, or multiple installations inside the building.
But a new strategy will have to get the city’s approval first.
Regardless of the outcome, Levy said the university will make good on its promise to have something up by the time the building is completed.
“They will be working with the City of Toronto with an appropriate commemoration strategy,” said Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who represents the area.
Wong-Tam said she talked to Sniderman personally in 2010 about the sign.
“He had told me that he actually thought that it was a little bit odd and strange to have originally designated the sign as heritage,” she said. “I don’t think he actually cared as much as people thought he did.”
Sniderman, Wong-Tam said, thought a better way to commemorate the store was with various memorabilia.
Levy and Wong-Tam both said nothing has been decided yet. |
|
|
|
|
|
