With songs like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” he became a folk hero to Parrot Head devotees. He also became a billionaire numerous times.
Jimmy Buffett,
the singer-songwriter, novelist, sailor, and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of tropical escapism on classics like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, particularly among his dedicated Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76.
His death was revealed on his website in a statement. It did not say where he died or what caused his death. Mr. Buffett had rescheduled a series of gigs this spring, citing a hospitalization but providing no other details.
Mr. Buffett’s songs, populated with pirates, smugglers, beach bums, and barflies, conjured up a world of sun, salt water, and constant parties, animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live presentations were filled with singalong melodies and joyful tropical iconography, making him a summer concert circuit mainstay with an enthusiastic fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads.
Mr. Buffett’s main source of success was his albums. He spent only a few years on the mainstream singles chart, and “Margaritaville,” his breakout song in 1977, was his lone pop Top 10 hit.
“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”
Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western” — a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics.
His songs were divided into two categories: mournful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and smart up-tempo tunes like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, such as “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 song penned with producer Norbert Putnam in tribute to Mr. Buffett’s maritime ancestor.
He sung, “I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/ Son of a son of a sailor.” “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”
Mr. Buffett’s muses were the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast, and no site was more essential than Key West, Fla. After a performance in Miami fell through in the early 1970s, he went to the island at the encouragement of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner.
“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett recalled in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”
The locations gave Mr. Buffett more than just a carefree sailing life and fodder for his singing. They were also the basis for the construction of a tropical-themed business empire that comprised a restaurant franchise, a hotel chain, and boutique tequila, T-shirt, and footwear brands, all of which made him a multimillionaire.
“I’ve done a bit of smugglin’, and I’ve run my share of grass,” Mr. Buffett sang about his early days trafficking marijuana in the Florida Keys in “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”
“I made enough money to buy Miami,” he continued, referring to his following business ventures. “But I pissed it away so fast/Never meant to last/Never meant to last/Never meant to last.”
Despite his claim of wasting his income, Mr. Buffett proven to be a savvy steward of his substantial fortune; Forbes put his net worth at $1 billion this year.
“If Mr. Buffett is a pirate, to borrow one of his favorite images, it is hardly because of his days palling around with dope smugglers in the Caribbean,” The New York Times writer Anthony DeCurtis said in a 1999 piece. “He is a pirate in the same way that Bill Gates and Donald Trump have styled themselves, as plundering rebels, visionary artists of the deal, not bound by the societal restrictions meant for smaller, more careful men.”
Mr. Buffett was also an outstanding novelist, having been one of only six writers, along with Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and William Styron, to top both The New York Times fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. He had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he had once cherished by the time he penned “Tales From Margaritaville” (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers.
“I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or I could redirect the energy,” he told The Washington Post in 1989. “I’m not old, but I’m aging.” That time in my life is passed. All that hard drinking and hard drugging was fantastic. There will be no apologies.”
“I still have a very happy life,” he added. “I just don’t do the things that I used to do.”
James William Buffett was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on December 25, 1946, as one of three children to Mary Loraine (Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr. Both parents worked at the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company for many years. His father was a federal contract manager, while his mother, simply known as Peets, was an assistant director of labor relations.
Jimmy grew up as a Roman Catholic in Mobile, Alabama, where he studied trombone at St. Ignatius Catholic School. He attended high school at the McGill Institute, another Catholic school in Mobile.
He enrolled in coursework at Auburn University in 1964. He dropped out and went on to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. at addition, he began playing at local nightclubs. He earned a history degree in 1969 before moving to New Orleans’ French Quarter and joining a cover band on Bourbon Street.
While working as a journalist for Billboard magazine, he traveled to Nashville in 1970, intending to make it as a country singer. (Mr. Buffett is credited for breaking the story on the breakup of pioneering bluegrass pair Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.) That year, his debut album, “Down to Earth,” was published on Andy Williams’ Barnaby label. It reportedly sold 324 copies.
Mr. Buffett’s second album for Barnaby, “High Cumberland Jubilee,” didn’t come out until 1976, long after he had signed with ABC-Dunhill and recorded “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean” (1973), which included the debauched party hymn “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”
Mr. Buffett was a big fan of puns. The title “A White Sport Coat” was inspired by the song “A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),” a 1957 pop hit for Marty Robbins. The title of another record was “Last Mango in Paris.”
Mr. Buffett’s 1974 album “Living and Dying in 34 Time” includes a cover of comedian Lord Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk.” “Come Monday,” a melancholy song from the album, became his first Top 40 smash.
“A1A,” which debuted in 1974, is named after the seaside route that runs along Florida’s Atlantic coast. Mr. Buffett’s first album to include references to Key West and maritime life. But it was his platinum-selling album “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” (1977), which included the smash tune “Margaritaville,” that propelled him to stardom. Another successful single, “Fins,” was released in 1979.
A string of successful albums followed, culminating in 1985 with “Songs You Know by Heart,” a collection of Mr. Buffett’s most popular songs to that point. It became his best-selling album of all time.
In 1985, Mr. Buffett also established the first of his many Margaritaville locations. That was the year Timothy B. Schmit, a former Eagles bassist who was then a member of the Coral Reefer Band, invented the name Parrot Heads to represent Mr. Buffett’s devoted following, the majority of whom were baby boomers.
Mr. Buffett, a conservationist, moved away from the Keys in the late 1970s due to the area’s rising commercialization. He first settled in Aspen, Colorado, before moving to St. Barts in the Caribbean. He also owned properties in Palm Beach, Florida, and Sag Harbor, New York, on eastern Long Island.
In addition to performing and recording, which he continued into the 2020s, Mr. Buffett composed music for films such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Urban Cowboy.” He also acted in films such as “Rancho Deluxe” and “Jurassic World,” as well as in television shows such as the “Hawaii Five-O” revival in the 2010s, in which he played helicopter pilot Frank Bama, a character from his best-selling 1992 novel “Where Is Joe Merchant?”
Mr. Buffett was an avid pilot who owned many planes and frequently flew himself to his shows. In 1994, he crashed one of his planes while taking off in Nantucket, Massachusetts. He escaped the accident unscathed, swimming to safety with only minor injuries.
Another of his planes, the Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by Jamaican authorities in 1996, who feared it was being used to smuggle marijuana. Bono of U2 was on board the jet, as was Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, as well as Mr. Buffett’s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later recognized that the incident was a case of mistaken identity, prompting Mr. Buffett to pen the song “Jamaica Mistaica,” a witty parody of the occurrence.
His wife, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett, two daughters, Savanah Jane Buffett and Sarah Buffett, a son, Cameron, two grandchildren, and two sisters, Lucy and Laurie Buffett, survive him.
Mr. Buffett was asked about a previous remark in which he somewhat incongruously mentioned the wholesome choral director Mitch Miller and the marauding Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte as two of his greatest inspirations in a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone.
“Mitch Miller, for sure,” Mr. Buffett remarked, no doubt in recognition of how his own supporters sung along with him at concerts, as Mr. Miller’s television audience was urged to do. “Remember ‘Sing Along with Mitch’? “Who did not?”
“But Jean Lafitte was my hero as a romantic character,” he said. “I don’t think he was a musical influence.” His way of life obviously inspired me, because I am the polar opposite of Mitch Miller.”
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