SAG HARBOR, New York, – His was a voice that chronicled an easy going homage to beach bum lifestyles speaking to generations with storytelling lyrics once compared with writers’ Ernest Hemingway’s eye for detail and Mark Twain’s inclination for mischievous humor.
Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett has died at age 76 according to an announcement on his social media accounts. The September 1st statement noted that Buffet was surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs.
He had rescheduled concerts this past May and acknowledged he had been hospitalized for an unspecified illness. Buffett had been fighting Merkel Cell Skin Cancer for four years. He continued to perform during treatment, playing his last show, a surprise appearance in Rhode Island, in early July.
— Jimmy Buffett (@jimmybuffett) September 2, 2023
In addition to being a bard for several generations of Americans needing the escapism and feel good vibe his music brought, the self-described workaholic was very much a shrewd businessman whose empire beyond concerts and music landed him a place on Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities list with a worth of over a billion dollars in 2023.
Based on the title of Buffett’s beloved signature song, ‘Margaritaville’ his holdings included nightclubs, restaurants, a musician’s typical business model of album sales, concert tickets and souvenir T-shirts. Buffett was also accomplished writer with several New York Times bestselling novels published.
Buffett’s music tells the stories of the hustlers, the beach bums and the pirates from all corners of the world. Through it all are woven the themes of escapism, wanderlust and an unbridled curiosity that makes life a journey worth taking.
The White House issued a statement Saturday from President Joe Biden who said:
“A poet of paradise, Jimmy Buffett was an American music icon who inspired generations to step back and find the joy in life and in one another.
His witty, wistful songs celebrate a uniquely American cast of characters and seaside folkways, weaving together an unforgettable musical mix of country, folk, rock, pop, and calypso into something uniquely his own.
We had the honor to meet and get to know Jimmy over the years, and he was in life as he was performing on stage – full of goodwill and joy, using his gift to bring people together.
Over more than 50 studio and live albums and thousands of performances to devoted Parrot Heads around the world, Jimmy reminded us how much the simple things in life matter – the people we love, the places we’re from, the hopes we have on the horizon.
A two-time Grammy nominee and winner of multiple country music awards, he was also a best-selling writer, businessman, pilot, and conservationist who championed the waters and Gulf Coast that he so loved.
Jill and I send our love to his wife of 46 years, Jane; to their children, Savannah, Sarah, and Cameron; to their grandchildren; and to the millions of fans who will continue to love him even as his ship now sails for new shores.”
Buffett embraced a litany of progressive causes including LGBTQ rights. In 2016, and although several other music headliners had canceled concerts due to an anti-LGBTQ law in North Carolina, Buffett, as always loyal to his fans decided to play the two concerts scheduled but took to his social media and released a statement castigating the law as “stupid.”
”Time has fortunately reversed a lot of that way of thinking. But now another stupid law, based on stupid assumptions, has sprung up like kudzu in North Carolina,” the singer-songwriter wrote adding a quote from the movie Forrest Gump, telling his fans, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Read Jimmy Buffett’s full statement here:
As a traveling musician for 40 years, I played many shows years ago, in many states where you could go to prison for 20 years for smoking a joint. It was a stupid law based on stupid assumptions. Time has fortunately reversed a lot of that way of thinking. But now another stupid law, based on stupid assumptions, has sprung up like kudzu in North Carolina, where we are scheduled to play shows next week in Raleigh and Charlotte.
North Carolina was there for me as a performer in the early days and I have always felt a loyalty to fans there that goes deep. Rightly so, a lot of people are reacting to the stupid law. I happen to believe that the majority of our fans in North Carolina feel the way I do about that law. I am lucky enough to have found a job in the business of fun. These shows were booked and sold out long before the governor signed that stupid law. I am not going to let stupidity or bigotry trump fun for my loyal fans this year. We will be playing in Raleigh and Charlotte next week.
That said, as for the future of shows in North Carolina, it would definitely depend on whether that stupid law is repealed. That is up to the good people of North Carolina and there are many, and I am confident that they will see that the right thing will be done. As Forrest said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Fins Up,
Jimmy Buffett
For over 50 years Buffett regaled audiences with songs about the faces and places he’d seen during his lifetime journey along the road less travelled.
His biography reads:
Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. His grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, was a captain on a steamship and his father J.D. traveled to India and Africa with the Army Corps of Engineers before settling in Mobile. For young Jimmy, the Gulf of Mexico was the doorway to a world of adventure where the characters he heard about in his grandfather’s stories were waiting to be discovered. The siren call of exotic ports was in contrast to his days as a parochial school student and an altar boy, and it only took a guitar to take him off course from the life his parents had imagined for him.
When Jimmy saw how a fraternity brother in college with a guitar garnered the attention of the girls, he quickly learned a few basic chords and started playing himself. Suddenly Jimmy’s world opened up – while he still attended classes, he quickly had his first band and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing 6 nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.
After graduation, Jimmy headed to Nashville to work for Billboard Magazine and to try his luck as a folk-country singer, releasing his first record, “Down To Earth” in 1970. However it was a fateful trip to Key West, Florida with Jerry Jeff Walker in 1971 that would give Jimmy the inspiration to merge his musicality, wanderlust and storytelling.
Key West in the 1970s was not the tourist-friendly town it is today – it was the last outpost of smugglers, con-men, artists and free-spirits who simply couldn’t run any further south in the mainland United States. It was there that the young musician thrown into the midst of this eclectic mix found his true voice as a songwriter – telling the stories of the wanderers, the adventurers and the forlorn.
In 1974, his song “Come Monday” from the fourth studio album “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” entered the Billboard charts, eventually peaking at number 30. That year found Jimmy touring solo-acoustic and performing at well-known folk venues across the country, from the Troubadour in Los Angeles to Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He hasn’t stopped touring since.
And then in 1977 came “Margaritaville.” A laid-back anthem about escapism and life in the tropics, the song spent 22 weeks on the Billboard chart, peaking at number 8. It catapulted Jimmy to national fame and, nearly a decade later, inspired Jimmy to launch a business empire.
After 27 studio albums, New York Times bestselling books, a Broadway play, numerous movie and television appearances, Grammy nominations and Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards, it was still the music that inspired Jimmy. He was just as likely to pop up and play an impromptu set alone at a Caribbean beach bar as he was to be on stage in front of 30,000 loyal ‘Parrothead’ fans.
And after logging millions of miles on the road, on the ocean and in the air, distant ports still beckoned and the same unbridled curiosity drove him to keep looking for that next story to share via song.
Related:
Jimmy Buffett’s classic – Come Monday with a never before seen introduction from the man himself.
and the song that began it all:
