Chris Penn, co-founder of Good Records and a fixture in the Dallas music scene, died on Wednesday, weeks after a fall damaged his spinal cord and left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was 54.
His wife, Jenn Penn, announced his death in a Thursday statement posted to social media.
“His injuries were just too great for his ravaged body to continue. These are the hardest words I have ever had to write, to witness and process. My kids have lost their father, I lost my partner of 21 years,” she wrote.
“If there is a heaven, and I hope there is one more than ever, I’m sure his arrival is causing a stir. He is free of pain and suffering, dancing in that familiar style, only Chris could claim as his own. Can you imagine Chris’s heaven? I hope it’s filled with Mexican food, pinball machines and a movie theater playing all the classics,” she continued.
Penn’s fall occurred on March 17 as he was removing a decal from a window of his Garland Road record shop.
Early in his recovery, he and his wife brainstormed about who would perform at a benefit concert, Jenn Penn wrote in the social media post.
“I remember saying to him ‘think pie in the sky, nobody is too big.’ When he said Willie Nelson, I thought ‘well, maybe not THAT big.’”
Penn co-founded Good Records in 2000 with Polyphonic Spree frontman Tim DeLaughter and the singer’s wife, Julie Doyle.
“I find it rewarding to place a great album in someone’s hands on all levels, whether selling them the CD or LP or helping have a hand in the behind the scenes of making a project come to fruition for a band and/or label,” Penn told the Dallas Observer in 2012. “There is something about holding a piece of art in your hands. We like to say, ‘You can’t roll a joint on a digital download.’”
He grew up in San Antonio, attending concerts at least once or twice a week, he also said in the Observer interview.
As a Texas A&M student, Penn cut his teeth in the music world as a talent booker throwing concerts, The Dallas Morning News reported in 2022.
Throughout the years, Good Records has served as a pseudo-concert venue.
Penn facilitated the reunion of rock band Alice Cooper for a concert at the store in 2015, some 40 years after the group’s split. Dallas music luminaries Erykah Badu, St. Vincent and Sarah Jaffe have also graced the shop with performances.
St. Vincent, whose real name is Annie Clark, said in a 2014 podcast interview with comedian Marc Maron that Penn “hipped [her] to all this s--- that wasn’t on the airwaves.”
During Penn’s intensive care unit stay, Robert Wilonsky, an editorial columnist at The News, paid him a visit. Penn had a tube in his windpipe, so he communicated by mouthing words.
“Twenty-five years,” he said of Good Records’ tenure. “Who does that?”
Wilonsky replied, “Only a crazy man.”
“Certifiable,” Penn said.
He is survived by his wife and three sons.
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