In honor of his passing, today’s classic songs of the day are “Margaritaville” and “Come Monday” by the late Jimmy Buffett. I know you know them both.
Jimmy Buffett started out in Nashville as a country artist. He released his first album in 1970 and it went absolutely nowhere. He later moved to Key West and evolved from country music to what some have called “gulf and western” or tropical rock. As The Washington Post put it: “Surrounded by blue water, he donned Hawaiian shirts, cutoff shorts and flip-flops, grabbed an old blender, and embraced the quirky beach community with his musical soul.”
Here’s how Buffett himself described Key West in the ’70s:
“It was a scene. Everyone went out and applauded the sunset every night. Bales of marijuana washed up on the shore. There were great cheap Cuban restaurants … Key West seemed like the End: East Coast Division—a common reason people wind up there, especially writers, artists, musicians, and other interesting derelicts, drawn by the idea that Key West is the final stroke of a great comma in the map of North America, suggesting more to come but maybe not.”
Buffett continued to record in Nashville, however. His next few albums (A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, Living & Dying in 3/4 Time, A1A, and Havana Daydreamin’) did better than his first but failed to generate a big hit. That would come with the 1977 release of Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes and the hit single “Margaritaville.”
One story has it that after the release of Havana Daydreamin’, Buffett was having drinks with Norbert Putnam, former bass player with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and Buffett’s producer, at a Nashville restaurant called Julian’s. They were commiserating over Buffett’s relative lack of success and Putnam told him that if he wanted to make records about the ocean, “you have to get next to the ocean.” So they went down to Miami’s Criteria Studios, recruited some world-class backing musicians, and recorded Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. You know the rest of the story.
“Margaritaville” was released in February of 1977. It peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and defined Buffett’s sound and career. The Post describes the song, accurately, as “a melancholic story of lost love and resigned regret.” You get that from the lyrics of the chorus:
Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s nobody’s fault
I particularly like his detailed description of the laid-back life in Key West:
I blew out my flip flop
Stepped on a pop top
I broke my leg twice, I had to limp on back home
But there’s booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on
(In case you didn’t know, a “pop top” is the metal pull tab on the top of beer cans. Okay, you probably knew that.)
Buffett claimed that he wrote “Margaritaville” in just six minutes. As he recalls:
“It was just another song going on the album, you know? That’s the way I looked at it. And then—never in my wildest dream did I ever think it would do what it did. Never.”
As popular as “Margaritaville” was, my favorite Jimmy Buffett tune is “Come Monday,” which predates his big hit by three years. “Come Monday” comes from Buffett’s 1974 Living & Dying in 3/4 Time album. It peaked at #30 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
I feel that “Come Monday” is a more honest song. It’s about a musician tired of being on the road and longing to be back with his love. That makes it somewhat autobiographical, as Buffett wrote it when he was on tour in the late summer of 1973, heading to a three-day Labor Day run at the Lion’s Share in San Francisco. He wrote it for his then-girlfriend, later wife, Jane Slagsvol. As the song says,
Come Monday, it’ll be alright
Come Monday, I’ll be holdin’ you tight
I spent four lonely days in a brown L.A haze
And I just want you back by my side
Jimmy Buffett ended up selling more more than 20 million albums. He racked up eight top forty hits, including “Come Monday,” “Margaritaville,” “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Fins,” “Another Saturday Night,” “Fruitcakes,” and “Mexico.” He also guested on hits by Alan Jackson (“It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere”) and the Zac Brown Band (“Knee Deep”).
More notably, Jimmy Buffett inspired a legion of followers, dubbed Parrotheads, many of whom travelled from show to show wearing Hawaiian shirts and parrot hats, drinking margaritas, and just having a real good time. As head Parrothead, Buffett exemplified the image.
Jimmy Buffet was an active and popular performer for more than fifty years. He passed away peacefully on Friday, September 1, from lymphoma. He was 76 years old.
