“Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic,
But I had a good life all the way.” — Jimmy Buffett, “He Went to Paris”
Jimmy Buffett always seemed to be having more fun than the rest of us.
And not just because he got stupid rich — Forbes estimates his total net worth at a billion smackers, which ain’t sponge cake — off restaurants and real estate. No, sir.
Dude hung out with all the right (wrong) people. Jerry Jeff Walker. Steve Goodman. Jim Harrison. Thomas McGuane, who wrote the liner notes for “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” married Buffett’s sister, Laurie, and is the only survivor of this august cluster of poets, musicians, and miscreants.
Buffett died yesterday at 76, “surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” according to a statement on his website and social media. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”
My friend Hal Walter and I were fans, declaring occasional Parrot Shirt Days in his honor when we were on the copy desk at The Pueblo Chieftain back in the Eighties. Hal actually tried to get him to speak at commencement when he escaped journalism school at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
I still love listening to “A White Sport Coat.” I have it on right now as I sip my morning coffee, and just played along (inexpertly) to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk?” That one is credited to “Marvin Gardens,” which was Buffett on maracas and beer cans.
The 1977 tune “Margaritaville” was his signature tune and biggest hit. But I always preferred “Death of an Unpopular Poet,” which Buffett clearly was not. I mean, he even had a species of Florida Keys cryptofauna named after him.
Many a margarita will be hoisted to mark his sailing away. Some for breakfast, I expect. Lots of vitamin C in those limes.
Mad Blog Media 
Saw him perform in San Diego about 40 ears ago and in Dallas with our son about 10 years ago. He was an absolute genius, off the charts entertainer, writer, and musician. Hard to believe all that talent wrapped up in one person.
If you haven’t, try some of his books ….. sheer fun and poetry! RIP!
A man of many talents, to be sure. But as Hal said, “Dude was a writer, first and foremost.” His best songs were short stories.
I have been a Buffett fan since 1975 but the best line is “if it all ended tomorrow I could somehow adjust to the fall, good times and riches, and son of a bitches I’ve seen more than I can recall”. Also ” The Captain and the Kid” helped when my Dad passed in 1977 “I was surprised to love a man do dear.” I saw him in concert at Ceasar’s Tahoe in 1981 when living in Reno. MY tequila days are in my rearview mirror. However, tonight might be a good time to review that policy. Jimmy torch up a number and slug those rum drinks down.
Some things are best left in the rear view, I think. Thomas “Captain Berserko” McGuane gave up the drugs and drink, and I think Jimmy Buffett at least dialed it back a ways. As he told The Washington Post in 1989:
Many good songs are short stories; Willie stretched a story into a whole album, “Red Headed Stranger.”
I never got to see Jimmy Buffet play live. But, His videos show a guy who could bring an large audience in like he was playing to them out on his front porch. We might have to do Margaritaville next week in dedication toi the man. We are already doing “White Sport Coat” and my bud Paul always sings the pink crustacean line.
Tom Waits is another guy who can tell your life story in a few short verses.
One of my favorites is “Frank’s Wild Years,” just 1:50 long. Frank seemed happy, but was not, and proved unwilling to settle.
Another is “$29.00,” about a young woman who thought she was leaving home, but nearly strolled right off the planet.
If the dude had never written a single tune or lyric and his sole employment had been song titles, he’d be in the Dad Joke / Bad Pun Hall of Fame for “Last Mango in Paris,” “The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful,” and the Christmas classic, “HoHoHo and a Bottle of Rum.”
Don’t forget “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.” The album’s worth buying for the title alone.
Shit.
As with the passing of all those we love, the world is now a different place.
Here’s a great Jimmy Buffett quote, from Playboy magazine via The Washington Post:
Most rockers (hell, most people), you’d be lucky to get: “J’ever notice how Florida looks like a dick? Haw haw haw.”
What a time it must have been, with Buffett, Harrison, McGuane, Hunter S. Thompson and the like all off the leash in Key West. Harrison once had to relieve HST of a firearm when he was getting a tad too gonzo for the party in the good old days.
Here’s Harrison mentioning his tour of duty in the Keys, in the essay “Then and Now” from his collection “The Raw and the Cooked”:
And rooting around the Innertubes I stumbled across this trailer for a documentary short about that time, “All That Is Sacred,” with Harrison, McGuane, and Buffett barking at us right from the gate. It just premiered at this weekend’s Telluride Film Fest and is apparently hunting distribution.
Don’t worry about Florida. Most will be underwater or frequently flooded by 2100 or sooner. The aquifer will be mostly salt water by then as well. And, Key West real estate will be cheap. Not good for much except holding an boat anchor.
Shoot, that reminds me: Looks like the ancestral headquarters of the O’Grady clan got hammered good and hard by Idalia.
My old man, Harold Joseph O’Grady, worked as a billing clerk at the Brooks-Scanlon lumber operation in Foley before WWII (“The Big One”) grabbed him and his brother, Charles Declan O’Grady, from whom I take my middle name. After the war Uncle Dec came home to Florida and became a Taylor County judge in Perry. Dad hung on with the Blue Zoomies until he had his 30 in and retired in Bibleburg.
Their parents, John Henry and Clara Mae O’Grady, are buried in Perry, as are Uncle Dec and his wife, Ruth. And some of their descendents run a hook-and-bullet mag there, Woods ‘N Water. It seems rumormongery runs in the family.
The old man had some unresolved issues with his family that we could never puzzle out, so they remained strangers to us, though we saw his mom from time to time, and eventually met his sister, Murel, and our cousins from that side of the family. We didn’t get to meet Dec until my dad died in 1980.
My sister Peggy and I drove out from Colorado to visit Murel and the cousins in Ashland, Oregon, back in the Nineties, if memory serves. Murel lived to the ripe old age of 105; she just passed in July of last year.
Any Irishmen out there living at altitude where you get 300+ days of sun per year?
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/03/1197492591/jimmy-buffett-rare-skin-cancer-merkel-cell-carcinoma
My taxidermist told me last visit that I should be using SPF 70 sunscreen.
“I use SPF 50,” I replied by way of making polite conversation.
“We recommend SPF 70,” she replied firmly.
In all honesty, I wonder how much of the deal has already gone down. When I was a swimmer and a lifeguard way Back in the Day®, if we slathered on anything, it was suntanning lotion, not sunscreen. Basting ourselves like holiday turkeys awaiting the Devil’s Barbecue Pit.
I’m regretting smearing EVOO all over my bod, and spraying the nooks and crannies with Pam when I was younger.
Gotta say, though … There’s no diff between 50 and 70. SPF 30 blocks 97% of UVB rays, and nothing will block 100%, so doubling the SPF can get you a 2% increase, tops.
It’s significantly more important to reapply than to worry about the number.
I’m a veteran of two Moh’s surgeries and multiple nitrogen shots. Riding bikes for over 30 years in Arizona at 4600 feet of elevation has taken it’s toll. The skin cancer that Buffett had is extremely rare. I had basal cell carcinoma but are concerned about melanoma. So, every six months I’m off to the skin doc where I take off my clothes and rotate for an audience of nurse practitioners and assistants. I’m just waiting for one to slip me a dollar bill. The skin on my arms is so thin a hard look from someone can bruise me. So, all you younguns out there, remember that sun damage to the skin is cumulative.
Patrick, perhaps I have a little something in common with your Dad. When you go into the service, leave home, and don’t come back, except for visits, you become the black sheep. That is especially true if the ones that remain are unhappy living there and feel trapped.
I’ve gotten nitro-tagged a few times and had the skin priest after me with her melon baller a time or two. So far so good. Lacking booze to grease the skids to Hell the Crazy will probably write my one-way ticket to the Lake of Fire Amusement Park, Ronald DeSatan, prop.
I wish I’d been more aggro about why my parents had so little to do with their respective families. But I was a self-absorbed little shithead and if wasn’t all about me right that instant I couldn’t have been bothered.
The hack writer in me wonders whether the old man’s deal involved love, money, or both. I mean, he didn’t talk to his own brother for a quarter century. That I know of, anyway. But it could’ve just been some growing-apart thing. That shit happens too.
And it rolls downhill. Once I left home I was gone, man. I’d come back to Bibleburg to visit friends and nine times out of 10 I wouldn’t even let my parents know I was in town.
I was expecting a little summat about Labor Day and Unions, but I was disappointed. You’re slacking, O’Grady
That’s the great thing about collecting the gold watch and clocking out. You don’t have to work on national holidays.
I tried to leave a comment on your 9/8 post but it covered up the reply box with notifications about all the WP blogs I commented on.