Music Man: From Cantor to Collector to Comedian

Murray Gershenz, a cultured gentleman of 87 who loves opera and served as a Los Angeles cantor for seven years, is getting his biggest laughs on screen these days playing crotchety characters. And he loves it.

But Gershenz has a problem: He’s in such demand for movies, TV shows and commercials, that he has no time to operate his antique record business, one of the largest in Los Angeles. He’s decided, reluctantly, that he has to sell it.

“Ideally, I’d like to see some philanthropist buy it and then donate it intact to a university or museum,” he said.

Gershenz has appeared in three movies this year: “I Love You, Man,” “The Hangover” and “Street Dreams.” He’s a regular on “The Sarah Silverman Program.” You can also see him in commercials for Lexus and International House of Pancakes.

“I don’t have the koach [strength] to do all this and run the business too,” Gershenz said during a recent interview in his impossibly crowded two-story warehouse on Exposition Boulevard. “Wednesday night, I went to an audition, 7 to 9:30 p.m. On Sunday nights, I take a workshop at The Improv, and on Tuesday nights I’m in a singing class at Beverly Hills High.”

Gershenz’s son, Irv, 53, runs the business while Gershenz is out performing and auditioning. But Irv is a drummer by night and a furniture restorer by day. He has no time to take over the business. He created the database that his father now uses to keep track of inventory, but it’s hopelessly behind. No one knows what treasures lurk in all the unopened boxes in the main store and in an auxiliary warehouse across the street.

“I’ve got at least 300,000 old records here,” Murray Gershenz said. “I just can’t stop buying records.”

He figures that, sold individually, his records are worth $3 million. “But I’m open to any suggestion. I’m practical. A buyer says, ‘Here’s a few bucks, I’ll give the collection to my college,’ I would consider it.”

The range of his collection is vast, from classical to rhythm and blues to Elvis to The Beatles to jazz. He has 230 albums of particularly Jewish interest.

“My biggest sellers are the old 45s from the 1950s,” he said. His doo-wop collection does well among buyers in Japan. “Just today, I sold ‘Yakety-Yak’ by The Coasters to a Japanese collector for $29.95.”

He’s got a full range of museum-class memorabilia, including operas on 19th century Edison cylinders. Most valuable of all, Gershenz says, are two 45-rpm records of a song titled “Barbie” by Kenny and the Cadets. “Barbie” was the first record by the Beach Boys-related act, featuring Brian Wilson as lead vocals on the single with Carl Wilson, Al Jardine and the Wilsons’ mother, Audree Wilson, as backup. “$2,000 each,” Gershenz said.

At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the Bronx-born Gershenz sang the role of Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.” He auditioned successfully for the St. Louis Opera, where he sang “mostly in the chorus.” War broke out, and he served with the Air Force, teaching new recruits how to pack parachutes.

One of the many aisles filled with records for sale at Music Man Murray.

In 1950, a friend invited him to visit Los Angeles, and Gershenz took a leave from his job as a restaurant manager in New York. One Friday night, his friend took him to services at the house of a retired Reform rabbi in the Mid-City area.

“I was not brought up with Jewish services,” Gershenz said. “I had no bar mitzvah. This was all new to me, but I always loved to sing. I started to attend regularly. One Friday night the cantor said to me, ‘I’ll be in New York for a few weeks. Why don’t you fill in for me?’”

The cantor never returned to the synagogue, which has since closed.

Gershenz attended cantorial classes at Hebrew Union College and earned his certificate. “I sang at every Reform temple in Los Angeles. I worked for five years at Beth Sholom [today’s Beth Shir Sholom] in Santa Monica. But the money was not what it is today. I had always collected records, and I opened a used record store at Santa Monica and Western in 1962.”

Celebrities heard about his shop and put Gershenz on the map. Many came for copies of their own records. “Ella Fitzgerald used to come to me at the Hollywood store, and B.B. King and Herb Alpert and Johnny Ray. Louis Armstrong found his old favorites and wrote me a beautiful letter. Once, I came back from lunch and saw that someone was on top of my ladder, and I asked him who he was, and it turned out to be Rock Hudson. He liked boogie-woogie.

“One day Duke Ellington called me from Las Vegas and asked me if I had ‘A Drum Is a Woman’ from 1956. I said I did, and he said could you mail it to me special delivery. I said better yet, I’ll bring it to you. I drove to the Sahara. Duke Ellington was 6-foot-1, and he picked me up by the elbows, and he kissed me on both cheeks.

“Hoagy Carmichael called me and said, ‘People tell me you know a lot about records. A singer is trying to perform “Baltimore Oriole,” but she doesn’t get it. Would you mind calling her and telling her what it means?’”

Gershenz did.

In 1986, he got an eviction notice because his Hollywood building was being torn down, and he moved to his present location. Shortly afterward, Gershenz won the part of Benjamin Franklin in the musical comedy “1776” at the Westchester Playhouse.

“I stole the show,” Gershenz said. In 1997, he signed up for a workshop at The Improv on Melrose. “Everybody laughed” at my routines, Gershenz said, “so I said, this feels good.” An agent caught his act. She got him a gig on “Will & Grace” in 2001, and he’s been winning parts ever since.

As for selling his business, “I’m still waiting for a serious offer,” Gershenz said.

Music Man Murray, 5055 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 734-9146. Open Tue.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.musicmanmurray.com.