Now, I'll say at the start of this blog entry, I happened to be familiar with the songs of Jimmy Buffett that he and his fans dubbed 'The Big Eight'. I wasn't a dedicated fan but I was well aware of him and his music and I liked his songs. Most of the things you're going to be reading will be information I came across online throughout the process of my research for this blog entry but the wording/text is all mine. A pet peeve of mine is reading a blog and it's nothing but a copy/paste job.
In my region of the country Jimmy was treated almost like royalty. Throughout the years, as long as I can remember, he played Cincinnati, Ohio annually at the River Bend concert venue. On local news there were always heavy media reporting and interviews with fans before and after his concerts. I do not know if this kind of attention was commonplace in other areas of the country but it's something I remember happening here every year in the summer.
If you're not familiar with his music it's long been described as escapist Island music.. tropical rock.. or gulf and western. He made a living writing and performing songs that often had the listener wishing they were there and one of the under reported aspects of his career is how he was able to achieve considerable longevity as a touring act rather than your conventional "one album a year performer". Oh, sure, he put out his share of albums but it's his concerts, in my opinion and in the opinion of others online, that will be his lasting legacy.
It's in his concerts where he turned his recorded songs into epics and where he emotionally connected with the audience. Precious few in the music industry actually emotionally connect with an audience and he did so on such a level that it comes as no surprise, to me, the level of outpouring of feelings of sadness and sorrow that filled up social media sites all day long yesterday when the news broke. In fact, fan and music industry memorials and memories of him continue to come in from all over the world.
Earlier I mentioned 'The Big Eight'. What were those songs? It was dubbed this because they were the most requested and most loved songs in Jimmy's career and his fans expected/wanted to hear them in every concert. In no particular order here are those songs:
1. Margaritaville
2. Fins
3. Cheeseburger in Paradise
4. Come Monday
5. Why Don't We Get Drunk
6. A Pirate Looks at Forty
7. Volcano
8. Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
On albums and in concert he could be very unpredictable and he also had a flair for comedy and could come off like a practical joker. That was simply his personality coming through in a concert setting. His party persona and Island escapism was financially rewarding and beloved by those who actually lived on the Islands or wish they could escape to some tropical Island somewhere. In the image below, the album cover of his 1988 release, Hot Water, we see him acting out the album's title. The water being hot it's caused the shark to jump out. The hand signal above his head represents a fin...and if you're familiar with his concert performances of the song, "Fins", he did that gesture several times throughout the song. To clarify, though, "Fins" isn't on that 1988 album. That song came out in 1979.
Historians report he sold millions of albums based almost entirely on the strength of his personal appearances and concert tours rather than through the traditional method of radio airplay and in the modern era the practice of well placed ads on social media websites.
Something I read online yesterday is one of his albums, titled License to Chill, hit number one on the Country Album chart in 2004...becoming the first chart topping album of his career...followed by another Country Album number one in 2006 titled Take the Weather With You. He would hit number one on the Country Album chart a third time in 2020 with an album titled Life on the Flip Side. The License to Chill album also hit number on the Pop Album chart...marking the only number one album of his career (to date) on the pop chart.
His flair for humor was not only visible in some of his songs and concert patter but quite a few of his albums had pun titles. A couple of examples being an album he issued in 1973 titled A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean. The album title was a pun/parody of the Marty Robbins song "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation". Later on, in 1985, he released an album called Last Mango in Paris, the title derived from the movie Last Tango in Paris. It reached the Top-10 on the Country Album chart. Havana Daydreamin', released in 1976, was a pun on the phrase 'having a daydream'. The previously mentioned License to Chill was a pun on the phrase 'license to kill' which was also the name of a James Bond movie years before the album was released.
One of the most revealing aspects of his albums is that quite a few of them performed much better with country music audiences in spite of the fact that people who worked in country radio didn't necessarily embrace him as a 'country' artist. Albums he released in the 1970's charted higher country than pop. In the 1980's 6 of his albums reached Top-40 status and 4 of the 6 were Top-40 with country audiences. Ironically, the role was reversed with his single releases. His single releases charted the most frequently on the pop chart (Hot 100) but he did have a handful of country music entries, too.
Now, everybody and their parrot has shared audio of 'The Big Eight' throughout Saturday and into the early morning hours of Sunday and rightfully so, those were indeed his biggest and best-known recordings outside his fan base, but instead of being another in a million miles long list of bloggers that'll share those particular audio tracks I instead have picked out this bouncy, comical song called "Pencil Thin Mustache". How many songs do you know that reference Errol Flynn, Desi Arnaz/Ricky Ricardo, and Andy Devine of all people!? It's from the 1974 album Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. On the photo that accompanied some of the single releases you can't help but notice his thick mustache as you hear him singing of wishing he had a "Pencil Thin Mustache".
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