Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose laid-back, good-humored, usually tropically-themed model of ingratiating country-laced pop spawned a profitable one-man enterprise empire, died Friday. He was 76. A explanation for loss of life was not instantly launched.
Buffett’s loss of life was confirmed by a press release on his official web site: “Jimmy handed away peacefully on the evening of September 1st surrounded by his household, buddies, music and canines. He lived his life like a music until the final breath and shall be missed past measure by so many.”
Over the course of a 50-year skilled profession, Buffett collected only one top-10 pop hit: “Margaritaville,” a marimba-laced, tequila-soaked paean to kicking again on the seaside within the aftermath of a breakup, which rose to No. 8 on the nationwide charts.
But Buffett’s boozy, punny, usually marijuana-scented number of tropical good-time music struck an abiding chord with a military of enthusiastic followers, who dubbed themselves “parrotheads” in reference to the colourful avian headgear they sported on the musician’s sold-out live shows.
That trustworthy viewers made Buffett a constant document vendor, even absent main radio hits. Active within the studio for 5 a long time, he launched 4 platinum and eight gold studio albums; his 1985 hits compilation “Songs You Know by Heart” was licensed for gross sales of seven million copies, whereas the 1992 boxed set “Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads” rang up 4 million items.
From the early ‘90s on, after establishing himself on ABC and MCA Records, Buffett launched his music entrepreneurially by way of his Margaritaville and Mailboat imprints.
Buffett’s extremely palatable number of party-hearty music translated into a number of merchandise, making him one of the vital profitable and wealthiest performers on the planet. In 2016, his private value was estimated at $500 million.
Writing about “Margaritaville” on the fortieth anniversary of the music’s launch in 2017, Forbes wrote that it “morphed into a worldwide life-style model that at the moment has greater than $4.8 billion within the improvement pipeline and sees $1.5 billion in annual system-wide gross sales. This yr, Margaritaville Holdings introduced a partnership with Minto Communities to develop Latitude Margaritaville, new energetic grownup communities for these ‘55 and higher,’ together with the $1 billion Daytona Beach, Florida location and a second in Hilton Head, South Carolina.”
The enterprise journal famous that the performer’s licensed manufacturers included attire and footwear, retail shops, eating places, resort locations, gaming rooms, eating places and even a Margaritaville-branded line of beer, LandShark Lager, which was projected to shift an estimated 3.6 million circumstances throughout its first yr of availability.
Buffett discovered success as a author: His novels “Tales from Margaritaville” and “Where is Joe Merchant?” and memoir “A Pirate Looks at Fifty” all reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller checklist. He was additionally energetic in movie and TV work, writing soundtracks and showing as a cameo participant.
His lone shot at musical theater, an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s “Don’t Stop the Carnival” written with the novelist, was an out-of-town flop in 1997.
An unflagging stage performer, Buffett toured yearly together with his Coral Reefer Band and remained a high live performance draw late in his profession – in 2018, he appeared co-billed on a nationwide tour with the Eagles. Endlessly reprised in live performance, his songs like “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” had been perennial sing-along favorites for a legion of parrotheads garbed in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops.
Analyzing the enduring attraction of Buffett’s music, Christopher Ashley, director of the 2017 jukebox musical “Escape to Margaritaville,” mentioned, “There is a celebratory bacchanalian high quality but in addition an actual pressure of disappointment in these songs. I believe his songs have an actual philosophical dedication to discovering pleasure now, being as now could be the one second…Don’t postpone pleasure. Embrace it. Grab it. I believe that’s profound and an important message to ship in a world as joy-challenged as this one.”
He was born on Dec. 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, MissS, and grew up in Mobile, Aa. He started taking part in the trombone in grade college. His grandfather was a crusing fanatic, and he took up the game, which might play a thematic function in his music, as a youth.
He took up the guitar as a scholar at Auburn University, and in the end graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. He briefly labored as a Nashville stringer for Billboard journal.
Buffett started taking part in professionally in Nashville, and lower his folk-inflected debut “Down to Earth” for Barnaby Records in 1970. He toured with nation/folks singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker on a 1971 trek to Key West, Fla, and shortly relocated to the Keys, the place he developed his easygoing beachside persona.
Signed to ABC/Dunhill, Buffett made his first mark on the nation charts; his early units “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean” (which spawned the early, barely blue turntable hit “Why Don’t We Get Drunk”) and “Havana Daydreaming” reached No. 43 in 1973 and No. 21 in 1976 on the nation album charts, respectively.
His breakthrough got here with “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” the million-selling No. 12 pop assortment that included his signature “Margaritaville.” The set was succeeded by the platinum “Son of a Son of a Sailor” (No 10, 1978) and the gold “Volcano” (No. 14, 1979). The 1978 stay set “You Had to Be There” additionally went gold.
Through his ‘80s tenure at MCA, Buffett’s albums languished within the center reaches of the U.S. pop charts, however he remained a high live performance attraction. During that decade he started his deep transfer into private branding and ancillary advertising, establishing the primary Margaritaville retail retailer in Key West in 1987 and the primary Margaritaville Café in 1987.
His fortunes rose within the ‘90s with the founding of his Margaritaville imprint, distributed successively by MCA and Island Records; 4 of his 5 studio albums throughout that decade – “Fruitcakes,” “Barometer Soup,” “Banana Wind” and “Beach House on the Moon” – reached the pop high 10 and went both gold or platinum. A pair of ‘90s live performance pictures, “Feeding Frenzy” (1990) and “Buffett Live: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays” (1999) had been licensed gold; the latter album was the primary launch on a brand new private imprint, Mailboat Records.
After the flip of the millennium, marking his first appearances on the apex of the American pop charts, Buffett belatedly launched a pair of studio albums, “License to Chill” (2004) and “Take the Weather With You” (2006) to No. 1 on the pop album charts.
His largest latter-day singles had been collaborations that discovered success on the nation singles charts. A duet with Alan Jackson, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” was No. 1 nationally in 2003, garnering a CMA Award as vocal occasion of the yr. A 2004 model of Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’,” lower with Jackson, Clint Black, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, George Strait, rose to No. 8. In 2011, he reached No. 1 once more alongside the Zac Brown Band on “Knee Deep.”
Buffett is survived by his second spouse Jane, their daughters and an adopted son.
