Changes in Latitude...

Jimmy Buffet early in his career, died Sept. 1 of a rare skin cancer Merkel cell carcinoma. PHOTO:GETTYIMAGES

The last thing I wanted to do was write another post about a friend who died. Then I heard that Jimmy Buffet had passed at age 76, one month older than I am. I hadn't heard of or thought about Jimmy in a while. I saw him perform live only once, and that was when he had become very popular. I wondered what's with all the Parrotheads.

There were no Parrotheads (Jimmy’s fans) when he recorded Let's Get Drunk or the Death of an Unpopular Poet, two songs on his first Dunhill studio album, A White Sports Coat and a Pink Crustacean. He knew how to turn a pun.

A year or so ago when Tina Turner passed, I mentioned to my late writer friend Rick Carroll that I had seen Tina at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz when she made her big comeback in 1982. Rick asked me if I had written about her. I hadn't. He said he would have liked to read what I had to say.

That's what friends who spend their time scribbling say to each other, which brings me back to Jimmy, who was, before all the tropical hoo-haw, first a writer.  Jimmy told stories with his songs. He had the gift of the pen. Before his music success, he wrote journalistic pieces for Billboard magazine. Jimmy ended up in Key West following a series of music rejections in Nashville. 

In the taverns of Key West, he discovered his muse while hanging and partying with writers including Truman Capote, Fred Neil, Jim Harrison and his brother-in-law novelist Tom McGuane, who wrote the liner notes for White Sports Coat… claiming the album fell somewhere “in the curious hinterland where Hank Williams and Xavier Cugat meet.”

Poet Kenneth Patchen was a favorite of Jimmy's who died with little fanfare. Jimmy's song Death of an Unpopular Poet was in honor of Patchen and fellow poet Richard Farina, both of whom were little known but dedicated to the craft.

It's a wistful tune. Jimmy saved it for a cool-down encore at the end of his shows. In the final verse, the poet gives his inheritance to his dog, leaving us with a wry smile.

I discovered Jimmy Buffet in the early Seventies when a new alternative radio station out of Gilroy, KFAT, introduced progressive country music to a local audience. Think Emilylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Progressive country eventually morphed into a genre called Americana. 

KFAT worked a song into its regular playlist about getting drunk and screwing. It had a country flavor and ribald charm. Who is Jimmy Buffet? I thought when the singer’s name was announced.

It wasn’t exactly a Nashville voice. He was certainly drinking margaritas, but who knew, save for his Key West pals, much about the author and his environment of misfit wordsmiths.

Margaritaville changed that. It caught on like a raging kegger at a college frat party. It was fun yet self-deprecating. “Been here all season, don’t know the reason, nothing to show but this brand new tattoo…  stepped on a pop-top, blew out my flip-flop…

He could have been writing a jingle for a top-notch ad agency in New York, but it was a tad irreverent. The message was not to achieve status other than being a fun-loving bum in paradise. It was that simple.

The rest is history. With a winning smile and knack for clever phrasing, Jimmy created a deep brand worth nearly a billion dollars. Along the way he authored a series of popular sea-faring adventure novels. Granted, he needed a little sprucing up from his wife of 46 years, Jane Slagsvol. 

"He spun a billion dollar empire from a shaker of salt," according to columnist Maureen Dowd, another wordsmith pal of Jimmy's.

I bet his writer buddies were astounded by Jimmy's success. His go-ahead album that included Margaritaville says it all: Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude.

Thanks, Jimmy, for your uplifting spirit and wonderful stories.