August 8, 1929 �" March 14, 2013
For several decades, an opening night at any theatre or the cabaret in San Francisco would not have been complete without Dean (Constantine) Stamatopoulos and his partner in life and business, Randall Wallace. Stamatopoulos, bon vivant, first nighter, and proprietor of the long popular Gramophone Records store, was born in Oakland on August 8, 1929, and passed away on March 14, 2013, in San Francisco.
The cause of death was complications from a fall, his friends said.
Stamatopoulos was raised in Santa Cruz, attended San Rafael Military Academy and College of Marin, after which he worked for small inter-state airlines, then joined TWA, and moved to New York.
He and Wallace first met in 1953 at a cast party for Kismet and Pal Joey. Wallace thought he was the most handsome person in a room full of pretty people. After Wallace convinced him to give up flying, Stamatopoulos worked at travel agencies, and then became a record salesman. In 1961, one of his customers put up for bid the record shop he owned in the Marina, and Stamatopoulos got it, and renamed it The Gramophone after a shop he'd seen in Paris. Stamatopoulos soon expanded, eventually opening on Polk Street near California. The Gramophone was an early advertiser in the Bay Area Reporter, using clever cartoons by the late Gene Palumbo including one depicting Bette Davis saying, "Gramophone, whatta dump!"
Noted within the industry as trend spotters, at the Gramophone the pair purveyed the music of the folk craze, met Barbra Streisand early on, made the store disco headquarters later on, and hosted many signings and in-store parties for Bette Midler, the Manhattan Transfer, and other popular artists.
The pair went on to open stores at Northpoint Mall, downtown on Powell Street, and finally on Castro Street, from 1984 to 1988. Foreseeing the softening of the record business, Stamatopoulos sold the store, and the pair worked for various wineries in Sonoma, before returning to the city, where the ever-sociable Stamatopoulos worked for five years as the concierge front door greeter at Saks 5th Avenue.
Fondly recalling his good life with Stamatopoulos, Wallace quoted a Johnny Mercer lyric: "When the angels ask me to recall the thrill of them all, Then I shall tell them, I remember you."