December 25, 1946 - September 1, 2023
He was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on Christmas Day in 1946. The family relocated to Mobile, Alabama, where Buffett spent most of his childhood.
He was particularly close to his grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, a former sailor who instilled young Buffett with a love for the sea. His early tune "
The Captain and the Kid" - from his debut album,
Down To Earth - was written in honor of his grandfather.
He earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Southern Mississippi.
When he moved to Nashville in the late '60s, Buffett was a correspondent for Billboard magazine and reported the breakup of the country duo Flatt and Scruggs.
Buffett had trouble breaking into the Nashville music scene and moved to Key West, Florida, in 1971. There, he cultivated a laid-back, beach bum persona that found its way into his music, which he described as "drunken Caribbean rock 'n' roll."
His fans are known as Parrotheads, a term coined by Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles.
Schmit told the story in a 2011 Songfacts interview.
"I did a little bit of touring with Jimmy a couple of summers, a couple of years on and off after the Eagles had broken up in the '80s," he said. "I was sort of in the background all of a sudden, but happy to be working. He was a friend of mine, still is. And we were going to a show, and I was in his car. We were going to one of those outdoor summer shows, and we had to drive basically through a lot of people who were going to the show, and they saw him and they started getting excited. And he started waving. I said something to the effect of, 'Man, these are your own Deadheads. They're not Deadheads, though, they're Parrotheads.' And he ran with it. It's too bad I didn't license that."
His biggest hit is "
Margaritaville," which peaked at #8 on the Hot 100 in 1977. The tune captured the imagination of listeners who dreamed of escaping to the tropics, where their biggest problem would be finding their lost shaker of salt.
Buffett capitalized on the popularity of "Margaritaville," opening a retail store named after the song in Key West in 1985 and launching the Margaritaville Café in 1987 and the Sirius Satellite Radio station Radio Margaritaville in 2005.
In 1974, Buffett had a run-in with Buford Pusser, the famously tough Tennessee sheriff, in a hotel parking lot. The inebriated singer couldn't find his rental car and climbed on the hood of Buford's Cadillac to get a better vantage point. The ensuing tussle ended with Buford ripping a fistful of hair out of Buffett's head. "I had a big bald spot on the back of it and I looked like a monk for about three months," he recalled. The incident also inspired two songs: "Presents To Send You" and "
Semi-True Story."
"
Jamaica Mistaica" was inspired by a real-life incident in 1996 that had Jamaican police shooting at Buffett's plane on the suspicion it was smuggling drugs. U2 frontman Bono was also on board with his family and compared the terrifying experience to a scene from a
James Bond film.
In 2005, Buffett made headlines after a busboy from a Florida restaurant stole his cell phone, which held the phone numbers for many of his high-profile friends, including country stars Alan Jackson and George Strait; actors George Clooney, Michael Douglas, and Harrison Ford; and former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. After prank calls were allegedly made to Clinton, cops and a Secret Service agent tracked the 22-year-old thief to his home and apprehended the phone.
In 2001, he was thrown out of the American Airlines Arena in Miami for swearing at a referee during a Miami Heat/New York Knicks basketball game. The ref, Joe Forte, had no idea who the singer was and took offense when Heat coach Pat Riley asked him if he'd ever been a Parrothead.
He won his first Country Music Association Award award in 2003 when he partnered with Alan Jackson for the #1 country hit "
It's Five O'Clock Somewhere," which earned him Vocal Event of the Year.
He's the author of several best-selling books:
Tales From Margaritaville (1989) - #1 New York Times Best Seller List - Fiction
Where Is Joe Merchant? (1992) - #1 New York Times Best Seller List- Fiction
A Pirate Looks at Fifty (1998) - #1 New York Times Best Seller List - Nonfiction
A Salty Piece of Land (2004) - #3 New York Times Best Seller List - Fiction
Swine Not? (2008) - #6 New York Times Best Seller List – Hardcover Fiction
He met his wife Jane in a phone booth outside the Chart Room Bar in Key West while she was on Spring Break in 1972. He wrote his hit "Come Monday" about being away from her.
He portrays Frank Bama, the protagonist from his novel Where Is Joe Merchant, on the Hawaii Five-0 reboot. He's also made cameo appearances in several movies, including Repo Man (1984), Hook (1991), Congo (1995), and Jurassic World (2015).
Despite his immense popularity, Buffett didn't land a #1 album in the US until 2004 when his 25th offering, License To Chill, topped the chart.
Buffet died on September 1, 2023 at 76. Cause of death was a rare form of cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma that affects about 2500 people every year. Buffett had been fighting the disease for four years but didn't tell the public - it was announced after his death. He performed as long as he could, playing his last show, a surprise 45-minute set at the Sunset Cove cafe in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on July 2, 2023.
Jimmy Buffet was good friends with the investor and philanthropist
Warren Buffet; the pair often referred to each other affectionately as "Cousin Jimmy" and "Uncle Warren." Jimmy performed at events for Warren's company Berkshire Hathaway, and the two admired each other's success in very different fields.
Because of their shared last name and public friendship, people often assumed that Jimmy and Warren Buffet were related, so they took a DNA test to find out for sure - they're not.
