Jack Grossi, who built one of the world’s largest collections of vinyl records and at one time had arguably one of the largest independent record stores in the U.S. — attracting buyers from as far away as Japan — died on April 27. He was 94.

Grossi died suddenly at home, said his wife of 10 years Liz Ownbey.

Grossi had spent that day working at PDQ Records, the store he started in Tucson with his first wife, Nadine, nearly 40 years ago with a single box of records they got from their daughter’s friend. They tossed the records onto a pile of stuff that they sold at the swap meet.

The records sold so quickly that they started amassing record collections and opened the store on North Dodge Boulevard in 1985. At one point, they had 1 million vintage and often hard-to-find vinyl records by artists in all genres, from rock and punk rock to country and classical, Ownbey said.

Customers came from throughout the United States and abroad to thumb through the rows and rows of records filling every wall of the 12,000-square-foot warehouse.

“I don’t think there was a bigger record store in Arizona,” said longtime Tucson musician Rich Hopkins, who said Grossi also occasionally stocked records by Tucson artists.