Murray Gershenz, Record Store Owner and Character Actor, Dies at 91
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press
Murray Gershenz in 2009, with a rare “Butcher” version of the Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today.”
Call Murray. Call him from Germany. Call him from South America. Surely he will have what you are looking for: Bjorling, Brazilian jazz, early Beach Boys.
For more than 50 years, Murray Gershenz ran a used record store in Los
Angeles that was much more than a store. It was an international archive
of more than 300,000 records that he loved, or that he hoped one day to
hear and was convinced that someone else out there did, too.
“He told me, ‘If I could listen to every one of these records I would,’ ” his son Irving said.
But some people in Los Angeles take day jobs to finance secret dreams, and Music Man Murray,
as both he and his store were called, was one of them. In 1938, when he
was 16 and living in New York, he helped form the Bronx Playgrounds
Operetta Club. They sang at the 1939 World’s Fair. When he was nearly
80, he started taking comedy classes in Los Angeles.
His much younger classmates wondered how he made it all look so easy.
The dry delivery. The exasperated face. One evening a casting director
spotted him, and soon enough there he was on “Will & Grace,” playing
a character named Uncle Funny.
Mr. Gershenz (accent on the second syllable), who was 91 when he died on
Aug. 28 in Hollywood, went on to become a familiar and much-loved face
in films and on television. Need a cute or cranky grandfather? Call
Murray. He appeared in “The Hangover,” “I Love You, Man” and other
movies, and had recurring TV roles on “Parks and Recreation,” “The Sarah
Silverman Program” and “The Tonight Show.”
Ms. Silverman, in a statement, described him as “natural and
effortless.” His genius, many people thought, was that he rarely seemed
to be acting.
“He was just saying the lines as if it was him,” said his manager, Corey
Allen Kotler. “Murray was the character. He didn’t have to act.”’
Mr. Gershenz achieved “offer only” status as an actor, meaning he
entertained offers instead of having to audition. He used some of his
rising income to keep the record store afloat; even with the recent
vinyl revival, business had not been the same since the compact disc
arrived in the 1980s. He started thinking about selling the collection
in its entirety. He had valued it once at $3 million but was willing to
sell it for half that much. Then he said he would take $500,000, then
half of that. Money was one issue, but he also had other things to do.
“I still try to take care of this place,” he said, surrounded by shelves
of albums, in a 2011 documentary short by Richard Parks, also called “Music Man Murray,” “but my head is, ‘What’s my next gig?’ ”
Morris Gershenzwit was born in the Bronx on May 12, 1922. His father,
Irving, drove a cab, and his mother, Eileen, made hats.
Morris fell in love with music early and started collecting 78s when he
was a teenager. Classical vocals were his favorite. While still in his
teens, he began singing with the operetta club. He used his given name
at first but later took a stage name, Marshall Grayson. By his 20s, he
was going by Murray Gershenz.
After a brief marriage ended in the mid-1940s, he traveled to Los
Angeles and ended up staying. He drove a cab, helped manage a bakery and
enrolled at Hebrew Union College. He also continued to sing, working as
a cantor at synagogues in the city and the suburbs.
And he kept collecting records. Prodded by his second wife, the former
Bobette Cohen, he opened his store in 1962 on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Bobette worked the front desk. He roamed the growing stacks of records.
Early on they mostly sold 78s.
“People looked at him, like, ‘Used vinyl?’ ” Irving Gershenz said. “It was unheard of.”
Yet for a long time it worked, and the store grew. They bought warehouse
space, then more warehouse space. They moved to another location. The
store survived the compact disc. It survived the iPod and MP3s. But
eventually Mr. Gershenz decided it was time.
“Every month or so there is somebody who’s interested,” he told The Los
Angeles Times last year. “But there’s never anybody who’s really
interested. People are biting. But nobody seems to have the money, the
place to put them, or knows what in the hell to do with over a
quarter-million records.”
Besides his son Irving, Mr. Gershenz’s survivors include another son,
Norman; a daughter, Nada Pedraza; two grandchildren; and two
great-grandchildren. His wife of more than 40 years died in 1999.
In June, Mr. Gershenz sat at his old desk at the store for the last
time. He had finally found a buyer. That month, four tractor-trailer
trucks pulled away with the records, heading for New York. Irving
Gershenz has not disclosed the buyer or the purchase price but said he
expected the collection to stay together.
“A man came in with money, enough money,” he said. “And it seemed like he was going to give it a good home.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/arts/music/murray-gershenz-record-store-owner-and-character-actor-dies-at-91.html
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