Reflections of a World without Jimmy Buffett - A Pirate looks at 80 looking at a Pirate who once looked at 40

 

            So now we live in a world where Jimmy Buffett has passed. I never expected to live in that world since I figured my clock would surely run out before his but here we are, JimmyB gone and, like a lot of folks, I find myself thinking about him beyond the "Oh, there's a Jimmy Buffet song," kind of way.

            Simply put, JimmyB was a great writer. He had a way with a lyric and a turn of a phrase that was beyond most of his peers. Even without a note of his music or the sound of his voice, we're instantly transported into his world when we think about the lines he wrote. He was about the only singer who could make a volcano or hurricane funny but even though his songs might have seemed frivolous at first listen, most of the time JimmyB took us deep. Although it's often celebrated as a happy drinking song, his signature Margaritaville was really about a broken-hearted drunk lurching around a hot, dismal trailer park probably on the edge of a swamp. There was little joy in the song other than JimmyB's cheerful manner of singing it. That was his gift, to cause us to plumb the depths of our sorry souls and make us happy while we did it.

            JimmyB and his music came out of the 1970s which was a time when pessimism covered us like a mildewed blanket. We'd lost Vietnam, the Apollo moon program was cancelled, Watergate was a nasty mess, and then we had to endure a fake energy crisis that left a lot of people frustrated, angry, and fearful. As a country and a people, we were unhappy and adrift but then, almost as a gift of God, something happened that wasn't planned. As the sad and sorry 1970's began to wane, a pattern began to form that somehow created a unique wave of individualism, adventurism, naturalism, and populism characterized by the embracing of sports such as hiking and mountain climbing and scuba diving and running and skydiving and parasailing and exploring our natural world with a mindset that our oceans and mountains and deserts and jungles were wonders that should be preserved, not  paved over. It was a wave of spiritual rebirth that artists like Jimmy Buffett, Jackson Browne, John Denver, Bob Marley, Jim Croce, and Gordon Lightfoot—the list actually goes on and on—climbed aboard to celebrate.

 

            JimmyB, however, was unique in that after that wave had turned into tattered wisps of foam and most of the other tunesmiths had died or faded away, he remained to tell us that nothing was over—never mind our gray hair and creaky knees— it was all still there and a cheeseburger in paradise was still waiting for us when we climbed off the cruise ship to pull up a chair at one of his Margaritaville restaurants. Over the decades, his fresh energy and new songs created millions of "Parrotheads" who embraced visions of sailing on crystal clear oceans even after those oceans were full of dead reefs choked with plastic debris. It was his sheer vigor that kept the dream alive of enjoying life amidst natural splendor. When you see people gathered to clean up a beach, they are usually not only armed with plastic bags and rubber gloves but a JimmyB song in their heads of how that beach should look. For that kind of inspiration, we should forever be grateful.

 

Getting it cleaned up for Jimmy

 

             When in 2017 Hurricane Irma destroyed our house in St. John, US Virgin Islands, one of the first things I did when I got power back in the one damp, musty room still standing intact was to turn on an old CD player and spin up a Jimmy Buffett album. His voice and lyrics soon had me feeling good and hopeful like they always did and I got to work clearing off the property knowing that no matter when I quit, it would be five o'clock somewhere because Jimmy said it was so. When I'd played his stuff until the men helping me couldn't stand it any more, I turned to Bob Marley until we wore him out, too. Finally, I noticed a CD covered with muck that, when wiped off, revealed itself to be by none other than Bertie Higgins, a singer who had, like JimmyB, come out of the gritty, funky lifestyle of Florida south of Tarpon Springs down through the Keys of the 70's and 80's. In those days, he and JimmyB were both singing for loose change in dirty little beach bars soaked with beer, sweat, weed, and cocaine. And like JimmyB, BertieH sang about clinging to lost love while surviving on the beach (Key Largo and Casa Blanca) or enjoying the ambience of a laid-back lifestyle (Pirates and Poets and Just Another Day in Paradise) or celebrating the sun-burnt and tatted-up smugglers, gamblers, cheaters, and whores (The Tropics, Down at the Blue Moon, and Port of Call) who were, as he wrote, "burning the Coast Guard out."

             I first heard Bertie Higgins and Jimmy Buffett about the same time back in the 70's and if I had been asked back then which of them was going to be a big star, I think I would have guessed Bertie Higgins. Instead, BertieH crashed and burned, truly making "enough money to buy Miami but pissing it away so fast," the lines JimmyB wrote supposedly about himself but more about those who rode in on the same wave with him but hit the sand hard and never recovered.

            For some reason I was moved to track down old BertieH to see if he was still around. It turned out he was, still singing occasionally in small venues. It was my privilege to tell him how much I enjoyed his music and, in turn, he told me he loved my writing and encouraged me to keep rebuilding my tropical paradise. When I told him I'd also been listening to Jimmy Buffett, he thought that was great and said he liked JimmyB's stuff, too, and had no hard feelings at all that he'd made it so big. I guess that was just the way JimmyB was, a talented guy who was liked even by his competitors.

            So that's my thoughts on Jimmy Buffett today. It isn't an obituary, only some reflective thoughts of a pirate looking at 80 about a pirate who once looked at 40 who has left us far too soon.