Richard Babiracki, 56; Owned Celebrated Pop Music Venue the Golden Bear Nightclub

Richard Babiracki, a onetime investment counselor who parlayed a fan’s love of music into ownership of the fabled Golden Bear nightclub in Huntington Beach, has died of respiratory failure. He was 56.

Babiracki, who operated the celebrated rock, folk, blues, country and comedy venue with his younger brother, Charles, from 1974 until it closed in 1986, had been in declining health for the last year, and was hospitalized in January. He died Saturday in Orange.

Under the Babirackis, the club presented hundreds of performances by a wide swath of entertainers, including Jimmy Buffett, Jerry Garcia, B.B. King, Steve Martin, Dave Mason, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Waits, Robin Williams, Neil Young and the band Van Halen.

“I always felt the Bear never got the credit it deserved for keeping people alive, for the role it played in performers’ lives and in the music business, and the number of songwriters that went through there,” said John McEuen, a member of the country-rock group the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He became part of the band during a 1966 show at the Huntington Beach club.

The club was nearly half a century old when the Babiracki brothers took it over from George Nikis, the restaurateur who had made it an important part of Southern California’s booming folk and rock music scenes in the 1960s by booking such acts as the Doors, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and dozens of others on their way to pop music stardom.

The Babirackis, who grew up in Minnesota and came west after college seeking the sun and fun of Southern California, originally wanted to open a patio restaurant when they found that the Golden Bear, which Nikis was then operating as a Greek restaurant without live music, was for sale. “I was just someone who liked music,” Richard Babiracki told The Times a few months after he and his brother took over the club. “I didn’t know anything about the nightclub business. I had to acquaint myself with the people who were coming up in the entertainment industry because those are the ones we are trying to book.”

In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Golden Bear was a familiar stopping place for many veteran acts on their way down and a new generation hoping to be headed up. As trends in music shifted, the Babirackis tried to shift with them, booking such new wave and alternative music acts as Men at Work, the Motels, Oingo Boingo, the Plimsouls and the Ramones.

The Golden Bear’s steady diet of old folkies, rockers and blues greats mixed with those of a younger generation to help establish Orange County’s identity in the Los Angeles-based music industry. It contributed to a burgeoning underground scene that exploded in the 1990s with the commercial breakthrough of such Orange County-bred bands as No Doubt, the Offspring and Sugar Ray.

The Babirackis ran into financial problems when they tried to open a second club, called Panache, in Long Beach in 1983. The venture lasted less than two years, at which point the Babirackis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to keep the Golden Bear operating. By that time, the Babirackis’ primary focus on veteran acts gave the Golden Bear a reputation as a backward-looking club in a forward-looking time, and such cutting-edge clubs as the punk-centered Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa and the alternative-minded Safari Sam’s less than a mile away from the Bear in Huntington Beach took over as the hip places for young music fans.

The Golden Bear was bulldozed in 1986 by city officials who said it did not meet earthquake safety standards and would have to make way for new development. Babiracki turned to selling real estate, but kept his hand in the music business by assisting with concert bookings at the Bacchanal club in San Diego.

Babiracki is survived by his wife, Cathie, and brother, Charles. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Shannon-Bryan Mortuary in Orange.

A family friend said plans for a tribute concert in the coming weeks were being formalized.