Beyond 'Margaritaville': Jimmy Buffett was great storyteller who touched me with his songs

I don’t know exactly when I became a full-fledged Parrothead, as fans of Jimmy Buffett are called.

Maybe it was during a summer job in Florida in the 1970s when I discovered Buffett and his “Gulf and Western” music. Or when my wife, Ellen, and I donned Hawaiian shirts and brought a plastic parrot to see his band perform at a traffic-clogged venue in Northern Virginia. Or when I picked “Little Miss Magic” for the first dance with our daughter at her wedding celebration.

Or when I listened to Radio Margaritaville on SiriusXM for hours on end for soothing escapism during the pandemic. Or when I rushed to buy tickets to his jukebox “Escape to Margaritaville” musical on Broadway, despite less-than-stellar reviews.

Or when I asked Ellen, who indulges my fandom but doesn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm for all things Jimmy, to get me his latest album for my 65th birthday. Or when I bought a drugstore magazine devoted to Jimmy’s 75th birthday. Or when … well, you get the idea.

The more interesting question isn’t when I became a Parrothead, but why I – and so many others – found him so appealing and were so affected by his death from cancer at 76 on Friday, the unofficial end of summer.

Jimmy Buffett, an American original in the tradition of Mark Twain

The answer, I think, isn’t immediately apparent to those who knew Buffett simply as a laid-back entertainer who parlayed his sole Top Ten hit, “Margaritaville,” into a sprawling business empire.

As a journalist, I admire good storytelling, and Buffett was, at heart, a writer and raconteur, an American original in the tradition of Mark Twain. Buffett, in fact, started his career as a correspondent for Billboard magazine. He wrote several books and was one of only six authors to top both the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists of The New York Times.

Buffett loved a good pun and clever wordplay: His band was the Coral Reefers, and one of his hits was “Last Mango in Paris.” Another song was titled “The Weather is Here, I Wish You Were Beautiful.”

When he sang “my occupational hazard bein’ my occupation’s just not around” in “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” it struck a chord with a newspaper guy in a world turned digital. 

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In “Everybody’s on the Phone,” Buffett presciently lamented an era in which people are “so connected and all alone.”

Of course, not all of Buffett’s lyrics were poetic or even tasteful. I cringed when, at a barbecue on the White House lawn early in the Clinton administration, the tent speakers blared Buffett’s “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)” – perhaps foreshadowing the scandal involving the president and intern Monica Lewinsky.

'Jimmy, some of it's magic, some of it's tragic'

I always envisioned Buffett touring into his 90s, like fellow balladeer Willie Nelson. I certainly thought he would outlive the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, now 79. But it was not to be.

For all his association with hedonistic partying, Buffett thought, and sang, a lot about mortality.

“Jamaica Mistaica” recounts the tale of his near-death experience in 1996, when one of his planes – carrying Buffett, Bono of U2 and family members – was shot at by Jamaican authorities, who suspected the Hemisphere Dancer was being used to smuggle drugs.

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“Death of an Unpopular Poet” tells the sad story of a poet “who lived before his time.” Posthumously, “his books are all bestsellers, and his poems were turned to song. Had his brother on a talk show, though they never got along.”

And “He Went to Paris,” a haunting ballad acclaimed by Bob Dylan and others, depicts a veteran who lost his baby, his lady and one eye in the Spanish Civil War. “Through 86 years of perpetual motion, if he likes you he’ll smile then he’ll say, Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic, but I had a good life all the way.”

That’s as fitting an epitaph as any for Buffett, who spent most of his 76 years in perpetual motion and was content to leave a legacy that he enjoyed himself and made a lot of people happy along the way.

But, at least for now, there is no joy in Margaritaville. Come Monday, there was no "Labor Day weekend show."

Bill Sternberg is a veteran Washington journalist and former editorial page editor of USA TODAY.