Ray Andersen, longtime owner of SF’s Grooves record store, dies

Ray Andersen, who had eclectic tastes, operated Grooves for two decades. Ray Andersen, who had eclectic tastes, operated Grooves for two decades. Photo: Andersen Family Photo: Andersen Family Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Ray Andersen, longtime owner of SF’s Grooves record store, dies 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Ray Andersen sold thousands of long-playing phonograph records in a long-playing career that delighted audiophiles and collectors of old vinyl recordings, old posters, old turntables, old school lunchboxes and just about anything else old and worth saving.

His San Francisco store, Grooves, was every bit as eccentric as he was.

Mr. Andersen, who died Tuesday after a long illness in his San Francisco home at the age of 77, operated and presided over the store at Market Street and Octavia Boulevard for two decades.

Within its poster-covered walls, music lovers could find tens of thousands of LPs, or long-playing records, inside cardboard record jackets that were nearly as prized as the recordings themselves. The store stocked records by such soul mates as Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, Miles Davis, Hank Williams, Country Joe and the Fish, and Mozart. Mr. Andersen was fond of all of them.

“He liked every kind of music, and he liked the feel of an LP in his hand,” said his son-in-law, Kevin Chanel, who now operates the store. “He recognized compact discs as a necessary evil, but he was devoted to records.”

Or, as Mr. Andersen himself once said, “CDs haven’t done anybody any good.”

Mr. Andersen sold most of his records for around $6, but a non-scratched LP and pristine dust jacket of a classic such as the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” might fetch $80 or so.

There were so many records that about half of them generally lay about the store unsorted, in huge cardboard boxes that looked as if they might have come directly from Mr. Andersen’s basement, and probably did. Customers in a charitable mood might call the store disorganized. Newly arrived customers long on music passion and short on funds would often get their records for free.

“Welcome to San Francisco,” Mr. Andersen would say.

Mr. Andersen was a native of San Francisco and a graduate of Balboa High School. Before getting into the record business, he was known as a producer and projectionist for Holy See light shows that were part of innumerable Bay Area rock concerts in the 1960s and 1970s, including those of the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane. He also managed the old Matrix nightclub in Cow Hollow, a landmark venue for the San Francisco rock scene of the 1960s and a precursor to the MatrixFillmore club.

“He was the smartest man I’ve ever met and had such a zest for life, always curious, warm, funny and amazing,” said his daughter, Sunny. “An eclectic genius.”

He was a book collector, a passionate reader and an accomplished photographer. He presided over flea market booths throughout the Bay Area, and he occasionally picked up a guitar himself and strummed it tentatively, to remind himself how much better the people on his records were than he was.

Inside his store, located only a few feet from the noisy Octavia Boulevard on-ramp to the Central Freeway, music lovers could also find an old-fashioned “claw” game machine from which, for a quarter, a lucky player might win a plastic replica of the old RCA dog. The machine broke down about the same time that Mr. Andersen took ill, but a store clerk pledged last week that it will be back in action soon, and the store has no plans to close.

Mr. Andersen is survived by his daughter and his granddaughter, Anabella, of San Francisco. His wife, Joan, died in 2003. Plans for a memorial service are pending.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @steverubesf