Over the years, thousands of students have paced the creaky black-and-white linoleum tiles of the multi-level Sam the Record Man store on Yonge Street. They have ascended the stairs to the country and jazz sections, passing a white wall scattered haphazardly with autographs. ROCK ON! is scrawled twice in thick black ink. The author: Burton Cummings of the Guess Who.
On October 30, Sniderman announced that the Canadian retailing icon had declared bankruptcy. Sam the Record Man owes creditors about $15 million. The Sniderman family has been supporting the company for the past five or six years, he confirmed.
“It’s so unbelievable to me,” Sniderman, 81, said. “I have never been in a bankruptcy before.”
Despite the bankruptcy, Sniderman vows to continue promoting Canadian talent.
Throughout his 63-year career in the music industry, Sniderman has actively supported and encouraged the careers of young Canadian performers, many becoming icons in their own right. Among the talents Sniderman fostered are The Guess Who, Anne Murray, Joni Mitchell, Jann Arden, Bryan Adams and Gordon Lightfoot.
But Sniderman is both humble and honest about his contributions to the Canadian music industry, calling it “a great partnership” between him and the artists.
“Artists would thank me for my support. But I would tell them, ‘Don’t thank me, I made money off of you!'” Sniderman said, bursting into laughter over the phone.
At the beginning of their careers, Sniderman would help artists such as “Gordie” Lightfoot land gigs at local pubs. When patrons asked where they could get his record, Lightfoot would direct them to Sam the Record Man, where, unlike other record stores, Lightfoot’s records were prominently displayed alongside better known acts like the Beatles.
Sniderman’s family was also a large part of his business, including his two grown sons. Robert, 53, is the owner of Top O’ the Senator restaurant on Victoria Street. The Senator regularly features live jazz music at its exclusive restaurant. Jason, 44, is the vice president of Sam’s, and is also a keyboard player for the rock band Blue Peter.
Though sad and disappointed that the 30 corporate-owned Sam the Record Man stores will be closing in the next few weeks, Sniderman says he’ll now have “more time” for his other commitments. (Eleven franchise stores will be unaffected by the bankruptcy.)
A devoted philanthropist, Sniderman is a member of more than a dozen committees and organizations, including the East Coast Music Guild, the Alberta Music Association and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. Sniderman was integral in the fight for Canadian content on the radio and helped to develop the “CanCon” regulations that guarantee a minimum amount of Canadian content is played on the radio.
He also established the Sniderman Sound Recording Archive at the University of Toronto’s School of Music. The collection includes over 20,000 CDs, 100,000 LP recordings, 30,000 78-rpm discs and 5,000 cassettes and tapes.
In 1976, Sniderman received the Order of Canada, and in 1984 was the recipient of the Ontario Bicentennial medal. But as often as Sniderman is the recipient of awards, he has also been a giver of them.
In 1996, Sniderman helped to establish the Sam Sniderman Award at Ryerson. The award, co-sponsored by the Ontario government as part of a matching-grant initiative, is given to a business management student each year.
Sniderman hopes the award will give students the opportunity he never had—to go to university to pursue their dreams. Sniderman originally wanted to be a lawyer, but his family couldn’t afford to send him to university and he was discouraged from entering the profession because it was already “overcrowded.”
Instead, Sniderman went into the record business, taking many risks along the way.
“How many times did I want to quit?” Sniderman said in 1997. “But I carried on. Don’t fear failure. It is most unusual for a successful person to not have tried. I would not want the last time I failed to be the last time I tried.”
And bankruptcy won’t relegate Sam “the Record Man” Sniderman to the background, either.
“I’m not going to be around,” Sniderman said, “but I’m not going away.”
