Charles Edward Buxton, 1949-2022

Charles Buxton, the man who brought me here, died on October 10, surrounded by his loving family. He ran a record store at 6393 Camp Bowie Blvd (with a brief detour to Berry Street) for 25 years, under four different corporations (Peaches, Sound Warehouse, Blockbuster Music, Wherehouse Music). He had people who worked for him for decades. Some of them even followed him from the record store to Petco when the last record chain folded in 2002. As a manager, he had a way of seeing the folks who worked for him as we were, accepting us, and drawing the best out of us by example and expectation. When I say I want to be kinder and gentler, I really mean I want to be more like him. 

Between 1978 and 1995, I worked for him four different times, always for short intervals, before going off to have various misadventures, after which I'd always return and beg for my job back. For some reason, he kept hiring me back. He was always present for me at times in my life when I needed understanding and wise counsel, and I have the sense he fulfilled that role for a lot of people. His "last detail," for Half Price Books, was processing a big buy of Folkways records. He still had the love and enthusiasm for music that he had when I met him in '78 and thought he was ancient because he was 29 (I was 21). I was there when he met his wife Barbara. They were married when they knew each other for just a few months, and she and their children were the center of his world for 43 years. They lived simply and frugally, and taught their children the same.

Charles was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and moved with his family to Richardson. By the time I met him, he'd seen the Velvet Underground and 13th Floor Elevators at the End of Cole -- up the street from the store where he and I first worked together -- and been out to San Francisco, playing bass in a rockaroll band, before his father passed and he came home to take care of the family business. I was proud of the way, after his retirement, he marched and worked for a fair, just, and democratic society. His passing reminds me that as we age, every person we love whom we lose means that there's one less person left who knows the stories. Charles knew a lot of the stories. Peace and comfort to his family, and to all who loved him as I did.