Margaritaville singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett dead at 76

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized seaside bum smooth rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavoured track Margaritaville and turned that celebration of loafing into an empire of eating places, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy handed away peacefully on the evening of September 1st surrounded by his spouse and children, friends, audio and canines,” a assertion posted to Buffett’s official website and social media internet pages claimed late Friday.

“He lived his lifetime like a music until the pretty last breath and will be missed outside of evaluate by so quite a few.”

The assertion did not say the place Buffett died or give a trigger of loss of life. Illness had pressured him to reschedule concert events in May perhaps and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized, but delivered no details.

Margaritaville, released on Feb. 14, 1977, promptly took on a everyday living of its very own, becoming a point out of brain for those “wastin’ away,” an justification for a lifetime of reduced-essential enjoyable and escapism for all those “escalating older, but not up.”

The tune is the unhurried portrait of a loafer on his entrance porch, watching visitors sunbathe even though a pot of shrimp is beginning to boil. The singer has a new tattoo, a probable hangover and regrets about a misplaced really like. Someplace there is a misplaced salt shaker.

“What looks like a uncomplicated ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken coronary heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often unpleasant inertia of seashore dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021.

“The visitors appear and go, a single group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and split no matter if any person is there to witness it or not. Almost everything that indicates everything has already occurred and you happen to be not even positive when.”

The tune — from the album Changes in Latitudes, Adjustments in Attitudes — used 22 weeks on the Billboard Incredibly hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The music was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic importance, became a karaoke standard and aided manufacturer Crucial West, Fla., as a distinctive sound of tunes and a location recognised the entire world around.

“There was no these kinds of location as Margaritaville,” Buffett explained to the Arizona Republic in 2021.

“It was a designed-up position in my mind, essentially made up about my activities in Vital West and getting to depart Vital West and go on the highway to get the job done and then come again and spend time by the seaside.”

Tunes critics have been never very sort to Buffett or his catalogue, such as the sandy seaside-aspect snack bar songs like Fins, Arrive Monday and Cheeseburgers in Paradise.

But his legions of admirers, called “Parrotheads,” often turned up for his concert events sporting toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis close to their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It truly is pure escapism is all it is,” he advised the Republic.

“I’m not the 1st one to do it, nor shall I probably be the final. But I think it truly is truly a portion of the human problem that you’ve acquired to have some exciting. You have obtained to get absent from whatever you do to make a residing or other sections of life that anxiety you out. I try out to make it at minimum 50/50 enjoyable to work and so much it truly is labored out.”

The Buffett brand

His special Gulf Coastline mix of state, pop, folks and rock extra devices and tonalities extra frequently found in the Caribbean, like metal drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal metal guitar. Buffett’s extraordinary ear for hooks and light grooves were being often overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

The song inspired dining establishments and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged motivation for the simplicity of island everyday living into a multimillion-dollar brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Superstars in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million US.

Buffett’s evolving brand began in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed merchants and dining places in Crucial West, adopted in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café close by.

There also was a Broadway-sure jukebox musical, Escape to Margaritaville, a romantic comedy in which a singer-bartender referred to as Tully falls for the far a lot more profession-minded Rachel, who is vacationing with friends and hanging out at Margaritaville, the resort bar wherever Tully will work.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas working day 1946 in Pascagoula, Miss out on., and lifted in the port city of Cellular, Ala.

He graduated from the College of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss out on., and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to participating in 6 evenings a 7 days at Bourbon Avenue golf equipment. He launched his 1st record, Down To Earth, in 1970 and issued 7 far more on a normal yearly clip, with his 1974 track Arrive Monday from his fourth studio album Dwelling and Dying in ¾ Time, peaking at No. 30.

Then arrived Margaritaville.

He executed on much more than 50 studio and reside albums, frequently accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was continually on tour. He gained two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Country Songs Awards and a State Tunes Affiliation Award.

Traveling beneath the radar in Canada

“Canada retains a specific location in my coronary heart,” Buffet informed The Canadian Press in a 2004 interview. “I have got more household in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia than I do in the States.”

When he arrived to the East Coast, visiting family and fishing topped his checklist of preferred things to do.

He also spoke of his fondness for Canadian songwriters, stating he saved “a eager ear to the north,” favouring the likes of Gordon Lightfoot and Lennie Gallant, amid others. He performed various music penned by Canadian legend Bruce Cockburn, with two of all those tracks — Just about anything Anytime Any place and Someone I Employed to Appreciate — appearing on his 2004 album License to Chill.

Canadian comic Mark Critch claimed Buffett commonly frequented Newfoundland to study his family’s record. He recalled “a very lengthy time ago” functioning into Buffett at a bar in St. John’s identified as The Republic.

“A person was sitting at the end of the bar who had flown in and was looking into his spouse and children background,” Critch recalled in an job interview. “And he walks out and then any person suggests, ‘I consider that was Jimmy Buffett.”‘

Buffett would make a issue to journey to the province’s considerably-flung rural communities, stumbling upon his grandfather’s home neighborhood of Rose Blanche.

“When he found out the place his ancestry is from, it linked and designed perception to him,” Critch stated. “I guess we’re very laid back. We like to drink, we like the ocean. All those are quite Jimmy Buffett things.”

Buffett could fly under the radar in Newfoundland, experiencing a kind of tranquil anonymity away from the eager eye of “Parrotheads.” He would often take the phase at local bars and carry out lengthy music like Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy.

Critch stated you would in no way know Buffett was a well-known musician unless of course you directly asked him.

“People today revered that his loved ones had appear from in this article,” he stated. “They’d respectfully give him his house, but a heat Newfoundland welcome.”

Buffett created numerous appearances on a local radio present hosted by Critch’s brother Mike Campbell on 97.5 KROCK, and experienced done at a local large university. Buffett had been planning to come back to the East Coast to advertise his forthcoming album, Campbell reported.

Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane, along with daughters Savannah and Sarah and son Cameron.