Biography:

James William Buffett (December 25, 1946 – September 1, 2023) was an American singer-songwriter,^[10] musician, author, and businessman. He was best known for his music, which often portrays an “island escapism” lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett recorded hit songs including “Margaritaville” (ranked 234th on the Recording Industry Association of America‘s list of “Songs of the Century“) and “Come Monday“. He has a devoted base of fans known as “Parrotheads”.

Aside from his career in music, Buffett was also a bestselling author and was involved in two restaurant chains named after two of his best-known songs; he owned the Margaritaville Cafe restaurant chain and co-developed the now defunct Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant chain. Buffett was one of the world’s richest musicians, with a net worth of $1 billion as of 2023.^[11]

Early and personal life

Buffett was born on December 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Mississippi,^[12] and spent part of his childhood in Mobile and Fairhope, Alabama. He was the son of Mary Lorraine (née Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr.^[13][14] During his grade school years, he attended St. Ignatius School, where he played the trombone in the school band. As a child he was exposed to sailing through his grandfather and these experiences would go on to influence his later music. He graduated from McGill Institute for Boys, a Catholic high school in Mobile, in 1964. He began playing guitar during his first year at Auburn University before continuing his college years at Pearl River Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1969.

Buffett married Margie Washichek in 1969; they divorced in 1971. Buffett spent years working as the first mate on the yacht of industrialist Foster Talge on the Petticoat III in Key West while perfecting the “Caribbean Rock n’ Roll” genre. Buffett and his second wife, Jane (née Slagsvol) had two daughters, radio personality Savannah Jane and filmmaker^[15] Sarah Delaney (Sarah was almost named Sara Loraine, after her grandmother but was, instead, named Sarah Delaney after her grandfather),^[16] and an adopted son, Cameron Marley, and resided in Sag Harbor, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida.^[17] They separated in the early 1980s, but reconciled in 1991. Buffett also owned a home in Saint Barts, a Caribbean island where he lived on and off in the early 1980s while he was part owner of the Autour de Rocher hotel and restaurant. During the summer months, he would travel the East Coast on his sailboat. An avid pilot, Buffett owned a Dassault Falcon 900 that he often used while on concert tour and during his traveling worldwide. Throughout his life, he also owned a Boeing Stearman, Cessna Citation, Lake Amphibian, and Grumman Albatross.^[18][19]

On August 25, 1994 around 3:00 pm Eastern time, Buffett crashed his Grumman G-44 Widgeon, N1471N, while attempting to take off in the waters off Nantucket, Massachusetts. The airplane nosed over, and Buffett was able to swim to safety, sustaining only minor injuries.^[20]

His father died May 1, 2003, at the age of 83^[21] and then his mother died four months later on September 25 at the age of 82.^[22]

In 2015, Buffett spoke at the University of Miami‘s graduation ceremony and received an honorary doctorate in music. Wearing flip flops and aviator sunglasses, he told graduates, from a line in his song “The Pascagoula Run”, that “it’s time to see the world, time to kiss a girl, and time to cross the wild meridian.”^[23]

Buffett was a supporter of the Democratic Party and hosted fundraisers for Democratic politicians, including several for Hillary Clinton in 2016.^[24]

A species of crustacean discovered in 2023, Gnathia jimmybuffetti, was named after Buffett.^[25]

Buffett died on September 1, 2023, at the age of 76. The singer’s death was announced on his social media pages and on his website. In a statement released by the family, they said “Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs. He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many”.^[26]

Music

Music career

Buffett began his musical career in Nashville, Tennessee, during the late 1960s as a country artist and recorded his first album, the country-tinged folk rock record Down to Earth, in 1970. During this time, Buffett could be frequently found busking for tourists in New Orleans. In the fall of 1971 after an impromptu audition, Buffett was hired by a Nashville club called the Exit/In to open for recording artist Dianne Davidson. Fellow country singer Jerry Jeff Walker took him to Key West on a busking expedition in November 1971.^[27] Buffett then moved to Key West and began establishing the easy-going beach-bum persona he became known for. He started out playing for drinks at the Chart Room Bar in the Pier House Motel.^[28] Following this move, Buffett combined country, rock, folk, calypso and pop music with coastal as well as tropical lyrical themes for a sound sometimes called “gulf and western” (or tropical rock). He was a regular visitor to the Caribbean island of Saint Barts and other islands where he got inspiration for many of his songs and some of the characters in his books.

With the untimely death of friend and mentor Jim Croce in September 1973, ABC/Dunhill Records tapped Buffett to fill his space. Earlier, Buffett had visited Croce’s farm in Pennsylvania and met with Croce in Florida.^[29][30]

Buffett’s second release was 1973’s A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean. Albums Living & Dying in 3/4 Time and A1A both followed in 1974, Havana Daydreamin’ appeared in 1976, and Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes followed in 1977, which featured the breakthrough hit song “Margaritaville“.

During the 1980s, Buffett made far more money from his tours than his albums and became known as a popular concert draw. He released a series of albums during the following 20 years, primarily to his devoted audience, and also branched into writing and merchandising. In 1985, Buffett opened a “Margaritaville” retail store in Key West, and in 1987, he opened the Margaritaville Cafe.

In 1994, Buffett dueted with Frank Sinatra on a cover of “Mack the Knife” on Sinatra’s final studio album, “Duets II“.^[31] In 1997, Buffett collaborated with novelist Herman Wouk to create a musical based on Wouk’s novel, Don’t Stop the Carnival. Broadway showed little interest in the play (following the failure of Paul Simon’s The Capeman), and it ran only for six weeks in Miami. He released an album of songs from the musical in 1998.

In January 1996, Buffett’s Grumman HU-16 airplane named Hemisphere Dancer was shot at by Jamaican police, who believed the craft to be smuggling marijuana. The aircraft sustained minimal damage. The plane was carrying Buffett, as well as U2‘s Bono, his wife and two children, and Island Records producer Chris Blackwell, and co-pilot Bill Dindy. The Jamaican government acknowledged the mistake and apologized to Buffett, who penned the song “Jamaica Mistaica” for his Banana Wind album based on the experience.^[32]

Buffett’s 1999 song “Math Suks” caused a brief media frenzy. The song was in fact promptly condemned by the US National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Education Association for its alleged negative effect on children’s education.^[33] Comedian Jon Stewart also criticized the song on The Daily Show during a segment called “Math Is Quite Pleasant”.^[34]

On February 4, 2001, he was ejected from the American Airlines Arena in Miami during a basketball game between the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks for cursing.^[35] After the game, referee Joe Forte said that he ordered him moved during the fourth quarter because “there was a little boy sitting next to him and a lady sitting by him. He used some words he knows he shouldn’t have used.” Forte apparently did not know who Buffett was, and censured Heat coach Pat Riley because he thought Riley—who was trying to explain to him who Buffett was—was insulting him by asking if he had ever been a “Parrothead”, the nickname for Buffett fans.^[36] Buffett did not comment immediately after the incident, but discussed it on The Today Show three days later.

In 2003, he partnered in a partial duet with Alan Jackson for the song “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere“, a number-one hit on the country charts. This song won the 2003 Country Music Association Award for Vocal Event of the Year.^[37] This was Buffett’s first award in his 30-year recording career.

Buffett’s album License to Chill, released on July 13, 2004, sold 238,600 copies in its first week of release according to Nielsen Soundscan. With this, Buffett topped the U.S. pop albums chart for the first time in his career.

Buffett continued to tour regularly until shortly before his death, although later in his career, he shifted to a more relaxed schedule of around 20–30 dates, with infrequent back-to-back nights, preferring to play only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. This schedule provided the title of his 1999 live album.

In the summer of 2005, Buffett teamed up with Sirius Satellite Radio and introduced Radio Margaritaville.^[38] Until this point, Radio Margaritaville was solely an online channel. Radio Margaritaville has remained on the service through Sirius’ merger with XM Radio and currently appears as XM 24. The channel broadcasts from the Margaritaville Resort Orlando in Kissimmee, Florida.

In August 2006, he released the album Take the Weather with You. The song “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On” on this album is in honor of the survivors of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Buffett’s rendition of “Silver Wings” on the same album was made as a tribute to Merle Haggard. On August 30, 2007, he received his star on the Mohegan Sun Walk of Fame.^[39][40]

On October 6, 2006, it was reported that Buffett had been detained by French customs officials in Saint Tropez for allegedly carrying over 100 pills of ecstasy.^[41][42] Buffett’s luggage was searched after his Dassault Falcon 900 private jet landed at Toulon-Hyères International Airport. He paid a fine of $300 and was released. A spokesperson for Buffett stated the pills in question were prescription drugs, but declined to name the drug or the health problem for which he was being treated. Buffett released a statement that the “ecstasy” was in fact a B-vitamin supplement known as Foltx.^[43]

On April 20, 2010, a double CD of performances recorded during the 2008 and 2009 tours called Encores was released exclusively at Walmart, Walmart.com, and Margaritaville.com.

Buffett partnered in a duet with the Zac Brown Band on the song “Knee Deep“; released on Brown’s 2010 album You Get What You Give, it became a hit country and pop single in 2011. Also in 2011, Buffett voiced Huckleberry Finn on Mark Twain: Words & Music, which was released on Mailboat Records. The project is a benefit for the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum and includes Clint Eastwood as Mark Twain, Garrison Keillor as the narrator, and songs by Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, and others.

Of the over 30 albums Jimmy Buffett released, as of October 2007, eight are Gold albums and nine are Platinum or Multiplatinum.^[44] In 2007, Buffett was nominated for the CMA Event of the Year Award for his song “Hey Good Lookin'” which featured Alan Jackson and George Strait.

In 2020, Buffett released Songs You Don’t Know by Heart, a fan-curated collection of his lesser-known songs rerecorded on his collection of notable guitars.^[45]

During a performance in Nashville, Tennessee on April 11, 2023, Buffett said he had recorded an album entitled Equal Strain on All Parts. Buffett got the idea for the album title from his grandfather’s description of a nap. The album has yet to be released.^[46]

Musical style

Buffett began calling his music “drunken Caribbean rock ‘n’ roll” as he said on his 1978 live album You Had To Be There. Earlier, Buffett himself and others had used the term “gulf and western” to describe his musical style and that of other similar-sounding performers.^{[47][48][49][50][51]} The name derives from elements in Buffett’s early music including musical influence from country, along with lyrical themes from the Gulf Coast. A music critic described Buffett’s music as a combination of “tropical languor with country funkiness into what some [have] called the Key West sound, or Gulf-and-western.”^[52][53] The term is a play on the form of “Country & Western” and the name of the former conglomerate and Paramount Pictures parent Gulf+Western. In 2020, The Associated Press described Buffett’s sound as a “special Gulf Coast blend of country, pop, folk and rock, topped by Buffett’s swaying voice. Few can mix steelpans, trombones and pedal steel guitar so effortlessly.”^[54] The DC Metro Theatre Arts magazine, in a review for Buffett’s musical Escape to Margaritaville, described Buffett’s music as “blend[ing] Caribbean, country, rock, folk, and pop music into a good-natured concoction variously classified as “trop rock” or “gulf and western”.”^[55]

Other performers identified as gulf and western are often deliberately derivative of Buffett’s musical style and some are tribute bands, or in the case of Greg “Fingers” Taylor, a former member of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.^[56] They can be heard on Buffett’s online Radio Margaritaville and on the compilation album series Thongs in the Key of Life. Gulf and western performers include Norman “the Caribbean Cowboy” Lee, Jim Bowley, Kenny Chesney,^[57] and Jim Morris.^[56][58][59]

Credits:

Wikipedia