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.

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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.

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.

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His family said a service will be held Tuesday.

With files from Debra Black, Vidya Kauri, Mitch Potter and The Canadian Press

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