Jimmy Buffett, who turned ‘Margaritaville’ into a lifestyle, dies at 76

NEW YORK — Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized seashore bum smooth rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored music “Margaritaville” and turned that celebration of loafing right into a billion-dollar empire of eating places, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy handed away peacefully on the night time of September 1st surrounded by his household, associates, music and canines,” an announcement posted to Buffett’s official web site and social media pages mentioned late Friday. “He lived his life like a music until the final breath and can be missed past measure by so many.”

The assertion didn’t say the place Buffett died or give a explanation for loss of life. Sickness had pressured him to reschedule concert events in Could and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized, however offered no specifics.

“Margaritaville,” launched on Feb. 14, 1977, rapidly took on a lifetime of its personal, turning into a way of thinking for these “wastin’ away,” an excuse for a lifetime of low-key enjoyable and escapism for these “rising older, however not up.”

The music is the unhurried portrait of a idler on his entrance porch, watching vacationers sunbathe whereas a pot of shrimp is starting to boil. The singer has a brand new tattoo, a possible hangover and regrets over a misplaced love. Someplace there’s a misplaced salt shaker.

“What looks like a easy ditty about getting blotto and mending a damaged coronary heart seems to be a profound meditation on the customarily painful inertia of seashore dwelling,” Spin journal wrote in 2021. “The vacationers come and go, one group indistinguishable from the opposite. Waves crest and break whether or not any individual is there to witness it or not. All the things which means something has already occurred and also you’re not even positive when.”

The music — from the album “Adjustments in Latitudes, Adjustments in Attitudes” — spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The music was inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance, turned a karaoke normal and helped model Key West, Florida, as a definite sound of music and a vacation spot identified the world over.

“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett informed the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my thoughts, mainly made up about my experiences in Key West and having to go away Key West and go on the street to work after which come again and spend time by the seashore.”

The music quickly impressed eating places and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged want for the simplicity of island life right into a multimillion model. He landed at No. 18 in Forbes’ checklist of the Richest Celebrities of All Time with a internet value of $1 billion.

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Music critics had been by no means very variety to Buffett or his catalogue, together with the sandy beach-side snack bar songs like “Fins,” “Come Monday” and “Cheeseburgers in Paradise.” However his legions of followers, referred to as “Parrotheads,” repeatedly turned up for his concert events sporting toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis round their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s pure escapism is all it’s,” he informed the Republic. “I’m not the primary one to do it, nor shall I in all probability be the final. However I believe it’s actually part of the human situation that you simply’ve received to have some enjoyable. You’ve received to get away from no matter you do to make a dwelling or different components of life that stress you out. I attempt to make it at the very least 50/50 enjoyable to work and thus far it’s labored out.”

His particular Gulf Coast mixture of nation, pop, folks and rock added devices and tonalities extra generally discovered within the Caribbean, like metal drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal metal guitar. Buffett’s unimaginable ear for hooks and light-weight grooves had been usually overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

Rolling Stone, in a assessment of Buffett’s 2020 album “Life on the Flip Facet,” gave grudging props. “He continues mapping out his surfy, sandy nook of pop music utopia with the chilliness, pleasant heat of a multi-millionaire you wouldn’t thoughts sharing a tropically-themed 3 p.m. IPA with, particularly if his gold card was on the bar when the final spherical got here.”

Tributes on Saturday got here from all walks of life, from Hollywood star Miles Teller posting pictures of himself with Buffett to former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, who wrote on X, previously Twitter, that Buffett “lived life to the fullest and the world will miss him.” Brian Wilson of the Seashore Boys wrote: “Love and Mercy, Jimmy Buffett.”

Buffett’s evolving model started in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed shops and eating places in Key West, adopted in 1987 with the primary Margaritaville Café close by. Over the course of the following 20 years, a number of extra of every opened all through Florida, New Orleans and California.

The model has since expanded to dozens of classes, together with resorts, attire and footwear for women and men, a radio station, a beer model, ice tea, tequila and rum, house décor, meals objects like salad dressing, Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites and Margaritaville Cantina Model Medium Chunky Salsa, the Margaritaville at Sea cruise line and eating places, together with Margaritaville Restaurant, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, 5 o’Clock Someplace Bar & Grill and LandShark Bar & Grill.

There additionally was a Broadway-bound jukebox musical, “Escape to Margaritaville,” a romantic comedy by which a singer-bartender referred to as Sully falls for the much more career-minded Rachel, who’s vacationing with associates and hanging out at Margaritaville, the resort bar the place Sully works.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised within the port city of Cell, Alabama. He graduated from the College of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to taking part in six nights per week at Bourbon Road golf equipment.

He launched his first document, “Down To Earth,” in 1970 and issued seven extra on a daily yearly clip, together with his 1974 music “Come Monday” from his fourth studio album “Residing and Dying in ¾ Time,” peaking at No. 30. Then got here “Margaritaville.”

He carried out on greater than 50 studio and stay albums, usually accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was continually on tour. He earned two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Nation Music Awards and a Nation Music Affiliation Award.

Buffett was really in Austin, Texas, when the inspiration struck for “Margaritaville.” He and a good friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant earlier than she dropped him on the airport for a flight house to Key West, so that they received to consuming margaritas.

“And I sort of got here up with that concept of this is rather like Margarita-ville,” Buffett informed the Republic. “She sort of laughed at that and put me on the airplane. And I began engaged on it.”

He wrote some on the airplane and completed it whereas driving down the Keys. “There was a wreck on the bridge,” he mentioned. “And we received stopped for about an hour so I completed the music on the Seven Mile Bridge, which I assumed was apropos.”

Buffett additionally was the creator of quite a few books together with “The place Is Joe Service provider?” and “A Pirate Appears At Fifty” and added films to his resume as co-producer and co-star of an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel “Hoot.”

Buffett is survived by his spouse, Jane; daughters, Savannah and Sarah; and son, Cameron.

— Mark Kennedy, Related Press