Sail On, Jimmy Buffett
• Legions of loyal “Parrotheads” the world over are raising their margarita glasses high to mourn the passing of Jimmy Buffett, the musical mayor of that mythical place known as “Margaritaville,” who died Friday, Sept. 1 at his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island at the age of 76. According to the notice on Buffett’s website, “Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1 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.” Buffett’s official obituary also notes that he had been fighting Merkel Cell Skin Cancer for four years but had continued to perform during treatment, playing his last show, a surprise appearance in Rhode Island, in early July.
Over the course of a half-century career, Buffett released nearly 30 albums, but it was the unexpected success of his quickly written, hangover-themed hit “Margaritaville” that became the cornerstone of a lucrative business and lifestyle branding empire that included restaurants, resorts, housewares, a Broadway musical and retirement communities, along with non-“Margaritaville” entities such as his children’s books, “Land Shark Beer” and “Coral Reefer” cannabis brand that accorded Buffett billionaire status by Forbes earlier this year.
As to the origin of “Margaritaville” — and everything that followed — The Washington Post notes that Buffett was a nearly 30-year-old musician living in Key West, performing gigs and trying to move past the disappointment of his early musical career as a country singer. In 1976, after a night playing a club in Austin, Buffett nursed his morning hangover with a girlfriend over burritos and cold margaritas before she drove him to the airport and broke up with him. As Buffett would recount in later interviews, while waiting at the gate he pulled out his guitar and began strumming the hook, writing most of the song in about five minutes. (Buffett told the New York Post in 2018 that he initially planned to call it “Wasting Away Again in Austin, Texasville.”
On his drive back home to the Keys, an accident on the road ahead delayed him long enough to finish the song. “There was a wreck on the 7-Mile Bridge,” Buffett said in a 2020 interview on The Bobby Bones Show. “I wrote the end of the song while waiting in traffic.” He finished the song at home and soon performed it at the Key West bar where he worked. “People seemed to like it,” he recalled.
Buffett was finishing his album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, and added “Margaritaville” to the track list as a late entry. When the album was released in early 1977, the album and the single became Buffett’s breakthrough hits, with “Margaritaville” peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. Criminally, it remains his only song to crack the Billboard Top 10.
Buffett is survived by Jane, his wife of 46 years, daughters Savannah Jane (and husband Joshua) and Sarah Delaney, son Cameron Marley and wife, Lara, grandson Marley Ray, two sisters, and a plethora of cousins, nieces, nephews and his devoted pack of dogs — Lola, Kingston, Pepper, Rosie, Ajax and Kody.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Buffett’s foundation, Singing for Change, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute or MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Given the timing of Buffett’s passing, we thought it appropriate to revisit one of our favorite Buffett songs, “Come Monday,” which begins with the lyric, “Headin’ out to San Francisco, for the Labor Day weekend show…”
