2023’s Music Losses “Top” Ten: Jimmy Buffett (#2)

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Technically, 1B. The top two were poets, sages, men of incredible talent with their songwriting pen. To lose either was awful, a gaping hole in the musical world. Losing them both in the same year was horrible. Alas, that’s life. And this is the great we lost last year. #2: Jimmy Buffett He was the subject of my December countdown, in honor of what would have been his 77th birthday. For good reason: Jimmy Buffett is one of my all-time favorites. I saw him five times (starting as the “opening act” [he did a full two-hour show] for the Eagles in 1980, when he came back out and sang “The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks” and “Take It Easy” with the Eagles for the encore) and got to meet him twice (incredibly sweet man). Those were bonuses. It was the music that drew me to him. I first heard him on a country music radio station in Daytona Beach, Florida when we first moved there in 1973, when “The Great Filling Station Hold-Up” was popular (well, for the time). Then came 1977 and “Margaritaville.” Not a favorite, but I can understand how a lot of people could relate to it (waking up hungover with a tattoo after a wild night). In the days before live webcams Buffett’s music became our “escape” (well, unless you lived in Florida ): put on his records and you’re on a sunny, sandy beach, even if it’s (in the words of “Boat Drinks”) “20 degrees and the hockey game’s on.” Buffett was no dummy. He turned that vibe into a career. He sang of a lifestyle of permanent vacations in a hammock on the beach with a “Cajun martini” (from “We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About”) in one hand and a “Tin Cup Chalice” in the other. Most people get two weeks of vacation a year, but his music allowed a mental vacation for the other 50. Living in the sun comes with danger: skin cancer. (I had a bad sunburn when I was stationed in Hawaii, which is why I go to a dermatologist twice a year.) Buffett developed a rare form called Merkel Cell carcinoma. He continued to tour while battling it, only stopping when it was so advanced that he had to enter hospice care. The sun set for the Mayor of Margaritaville on September 1, 2023. In his honor, the city of Key West held a New Orleans-style wake for him (known as a “second line”), and two bills are currently in the Florida legislature to name A1A, which he titled an album after, the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway, and for Margaritaville license plates. But the party will never end, thanks to the music he left us. Fins up. Jimmy Buffett Born James William Buffett December 25, 1946 - September 1, 2023 (age 76) Per @NJChicaa ‘s request, here’s Buffett’s song about the America’s Cup, “Take It Back”: