Jimmy Buffet 

1946-2023

James William Buffett was born on December 25, 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the child of Jamest Delaney "J.D." Buffet, Jr. and Mary Loraine Peets Buffett.  J.D. served as a flight mechanic in the Pacific with the Army Air Corps in World War II and moved the family to Mobile soon after to work for Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company.  Buffett's parents wanted their son to be either a Jesuit priest or a naval officer and sent him to parochial schools.  He was a Boy Scout and altar boy in St. Ignatius Parsih in Mobile and graduated in 1964 from McGill Institute (now McGill-Toolen Catholic High School), an all-male college preparatory school.  His youthful interests in fishing, boating, swimming and surfing along the Gulf Coast are passions he maintained as an adult which influenced many of his creative endeavors.  

Buffett entered Auburn as a freshman in 1965 and pledged the social fraternity, Sigma Pi.  He learned guitar from another pledge, Johnny Youngblood because he saw it brought Youngblood success in meeting coeds.  Buffett was unable to balance his newfound interests in music and girls with his college classes leaving Auburn in April of 1966.  To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, he enrolled the following September at Pearl River Junior College in Poplarville, Mississippi.  

Buffett turned to music to pay his college expenses, working first as a street singer on weekends in New Orleans and then at engagements along the Gulf Coast with band members, Doug Duncan and Susan Pitman.  Buffett's real education came from living in the hippie counterculture of the late-1960s French Quarter in New Orleans.  Nevertheless, Buffett maintained his grades and transferred to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg to complete a bachelor's degree in history in 1969.  

In 1973, Buffett signed with ABC-Dunhill Records.  The Living and Dying in 3/4 Time in 1974 contained Buffett's first hit single, "Come Monday".  Buffett struggled to find a niche in the music industry because his songs could not be easily categorized.  He formed the Coral Reefer Band in 1975 and their album Changes in Latitudes in 1977 featuring Buffett's most popular song, "Margaritaville" reached number eight on Billboard's charts.

In the late 1980s, Buffett branched into entrepreneurship.  He opened the first of several Margaritaville restaurants in Key West in 1987.  In 1989, he invested in the Ft. Myers Miracles, a minor league baseball team with actor and comedian, Bill Murray.  IIn 1998, he launched Radio Margaritaville, available for subscription on Sirius satellite radio.  In 2000, Outback Restaurants paid Buffett $1 million for the rights to name a chain of restaurants named Cheeseburger in Paradise, after the title of a hit song from his Son of a Son of a Sailor recorded in 1978.  

Buffett also took up writing, publishing Tales from Margaritaville, a collection of short stores in 1989.  His 1992 mystery novel, Where Is Joe Merchant? spent months on the New York Times best-seller list for fiction.  He also co-authored the children's book Jolly Mon (1988) and Trouble Dolls (1991) with his daughter, Savannah Jane and illustrator, Lambert Davis.  His autogiographical A Pirate Looks at Fifty (1998) topped the New York Times non-fiction list right after its release and his novel A Salty Piece of Land (2004) was a best-seller, too.

A flight enthusiast, Buffett owned and flew a number of seaplanes.  On August 25, 1994 Buffett survived a crash of his seaplane, Lady of the Waters in Madeket Harbor, Nantucket.  

Buffett's collaboration with country music star Alan Jackson on the hit single "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere in 2003 earned the Country Music Award for Vocal Event of 2003, a Grammy nomination for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals and the Amerian Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Song of the Year for 2004.  

Throughout his life he continued to tour regularly, performing benefit concerts for survivors of hurricanes and other disasters.  He was also a recognized environmentalist, especially in the efforts to save manatees and their habitats in the Florida Everglades.

This talented musician left us on September 1, 2023 though his legacy will live on through his music and the causes which were close to his heart.