Murray Gershenz (1922–2013)

Murray Gershenz, the used-record dealer known as Music Man Murray, has died at the age of ninety-one. From the Los Angeles Times obituary:

The store attracted entertainers like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and B. B. King looking for their own earlier work, as well as ordinary lovers of hard-to-find music, such as Richard Parks, who made a documentary about Gershenz and his records.

“I started collecting old hillbilly music in high school and Music Man Murray was on the list of places you had to go to find that kind of stuff,” said Parks, whose Music Man Murray came out in 2012. “He was the godfather of the used-record store.”

Here is the film’s website.

[Found via Van Dyke Parks’s Twitter.]