Jimmy Buffett RIP. Dec.25 1946 - Sept.1 2023

[charlene]

I am heart sick about this.. I knew he was ill but since May when he cancelled 2023 shows due to serius health issues to his death 3 1/2 months later is shocking.. But he'd been diagnosed with skin cancer 4 years ago and kept his treatments and diagnosis private..

So May 1 we lost Gordon and September 1 we lost Jimmy.. That's 2 of the 3 faves I've always had.. Kris is not well but I hope he isn't next.

Add in Deb Brinkley, a long time member here and in person friend who died on August 1 this has been a hard 4 months...

November 2012 at Massey when JB came to Massey to see Gordon.. When he started his career he has said that he wanted to write songs in a "Lightfoot style.".. Come Monday is one of them and seems to be influenced also by Early Morning Rain in the story..

GordonLightfoot introduces JimmyBuffett 11 17...

[charlene]

Brad Wheeler from The Globe and Mail contacted me about writing an obit after i tweeted a reply to his about JB .. (he also contacted me when Gordon died and a few times in the last several years but I don’t remember why..lol)

This is it: (he did a bit of editing on my long long one..lol)
Will be in the paper this week..

I have newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, t-shirts - fan club stuff/copies of The Coconut Telegraph…concert at gardens in 1978 was $7.00 ..lol

The first time I saw Jimmy Buffet was in 1978 at Maple Leaf Gardens. A concert of his was always a party and no one seemed to have a better time than Jimmy himself.
The last time I saw him in concert was at the amphitheatre in Toronto, in 1996. He had come in a day early, flying his own little seaplane and taking video of the skyline and the city that was broadcast on the big screens during the show.
He made every city feel they were the most important place to be the night he was there. At one point he and a bandmember walked up the hill to about six metres from the lawn seats where I was sitting and got on a small wooden stage. We lawn people loved it, as they played a few tunes just for us.
The last time I saw him in person was the only time I ever met him. It was at a Gordon Lightfoot concert at Massey Hall in Nov. 17, 2012. It was Gordon’s 74th birthday. The audience sang Happy Birthday to him.
After intermission, Gordon announced that Jimmy Buffett was in the audience, and he was also quite chuffed to tell us that Jimmy was ‘’one of us.’' His grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, was a sailor who had Newfoundland and Cape Breton roots. He was the inspiration behind Son of a Son of a Sailor and The Captain and The Kid.
“Canada holds a special place in my heart,” Buffett said in a 2004 interview. Over the years he often visited Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to fish and visit family.
At Massey Hall, I was sitting in the front row a few seats from the centre aisle and when the concert was over, Jimmy walked by. I put out my hand and said, “Hello, Mr. Buffett.” When he stopped and said hello back, I told him I was a long-time fan and Parrothead going back to the early 1970s, and that I was a Parrothead before I was a Lighthead.
He leaned back and asked, “What’s a Lighthead?”
I told him that is what long time Lightfoot fans called themselves, like the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads. He gave me a big smile and with that southern drawl and twinkling blue eyes declared, “Well, then, I’m a Lighthead too.”
He loved, respected and admired Lightfoot, who also loved to sail. In his tune Rue De La Guitare, he namechecks Lightfoot and his Martin D-18 acoustic guitar: “A toast to those who love to hear a D-18 played Lightfoot clear.”
The respect ran deep.
We well know that their lives were dedicated to their craft of making music and being onstage for their fans year after year. Their songs and memories are forever in our DNA as we will always be thankful that we were on this earth at the same time as Gordon and Jimmy.
Charlene Westbrook, Whitby, Ont.

[JohninCt.]

Thanks for the very nice tribute and info.

[charlene]

online:
Jimmy was always true to himself. He had several song lines about not selling out ("You'll Never Work in this Bidness Again" comes to mind). He admitted, and critics agreed, that he was not the best singer or best guitar player. When Nashville didn't want him, he kept going. When record companies didn't let him be who he was, he started his own label. He never tried to be anything but Jimmy. He had a broad scope of influences, and profusely honored them all (from Mark Twain to Gordon Lightfoot), but he was always able to boil it all down to the essence of Buffett. He discovered something in life, and gave that something enthusiastically to each of us. There never was, nor will there ever be, anyone like James William Buffett.
"Some people never find it, some only pretend; but I just want to live happily ever after, every now and then"

[DellroyGM]

I think it was a 1998 Playboy article, where they interviewed Jimmy about the Disney World offer. He was very pleased with himself, saying, "I turned down the mouse!"
Like Paul McCartney said, "bubbles up, Jimmy!"

[charlene]

Bubbles up is his new single...

“It seems that so many wonderful people are leaving this world, and now Jimmy Buffett is one of them,” Paul McCartney said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I’ve known Jimmy for some time and found him to be one of the kindest and most generous people.”

McCartney, who joined Buffett on a song for his upcoming album, recalled one of the new tracks Buffett had played for him called “Bubbles Up.”

“He turned a diving phrase that is used to train people underwater into a metaphor for life,” The Beatles’ lead singer wrote. “When you’re confused and don’t know where you are just follow the bubbles – they’ll take you up to the surface and straighten you out right away.”

“So long, Jim. You are a very special man and friend and it was a great privilege to get to know you and love you. Bubbles up, my friend,” he added.

[charlene]

https://www.buffettnews.com/2023/09/...zOuZiugmGxOY0s


Miami Herald’s review of Buffett’s album “Equal Strain on All Parts”
September 9, 2023

From the Miami Herald: “Jimmy Buffett left behind 14 new songs. Here’s how you can hear some of them now“. Pre-Order the new album “Equal Strain on All Parts” at Mailboat Records or Amazon.com

Last spring, Jimmy Buffett recorded vocals for a future album, “Equal Strain on All Parts,” at his Key West studio. At the time, he was being honored for one of his oldest signature made-in-the-Keys songs. Now, a week after Buffett died at his Long Island home from Merkel cell skin cancer, the world has started to listen to some of his new music. On Friday, the early release tracks hit download and streaming services, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal, Pandora, Qobuz and Spotify. The full album, including the three just-issued new songs, will be released Nov. 3.

The sneak peeks include two songs Paul McCartney rhapsodized about on an affectionate Facebook post dedicated to his pal last weekend. “My Gummie Just Kicked In,” which features the Beatles and Wings man on bass, originated last year at a dinner party with Buffett, his wife Jane, McCartney, and his wife, Nancy.

According to a media release from Buffett’s Florida-based publicist, “Nancy stumbled on her way to the dinner table, and when a worried Buffett asked her if she was OK, she responded: ‘Oh, no — I’m fine. My gummie just kicked in!’” Buffett, McCartney said, immediately responded, “That’s a good idea for a song.” The other two featured singles out now and on Buffett’s Radio Margaritaville are an album highlight: “Bubbles Up,” and the playful “Like My Dog,” which feels particularly poignant given that Buffett was surrounded by his family and his dogs Lola, Kingston, Pepper, Rosie, Ajax, and Kody in his final days at his Long Island home. Of “Bubbles Up,” a Buffett and Will Kimbrough original, McCartney wrote on his post: “The vocal was probably the best I’ve heard him sing ever. He turned a diving phrase that is used to train people underwater into a metaphor for life when you’re confused and don’t know where you are just follow the bubbles — they’ll take you up to the surface and straighten you out right away.”

What does Buffett’s new album sound like?

“Equal Strain on All Parts,” released on Buffett’s Mailboat Records through a Sun Records distribution deal, takes its title from a phrase the singer-songwriter’s grandfather James Delaney Buffett coined for taking a nap.

Fittingly, the album is a typically breezy and smooth 14-track, 53-minute musical trip through Buffett-styled Caribbean island rhythms, a bit of Gulf and Western country on “Close Calls,” an opening blast of New Orleans jazz and the bard’s musings on the life that led him on his Key West-kissed life’s journey. “I guess I was born with that nomad gene/There’s very little of this planet that I have not seen,” Buffett sings on the jaunty “Portugal or PEI” before referencing a line he tweaks from his own 1979 classic, “Volcano”: “Where am I gonna go when the volcano blows/Everybody is always asking.” He takes listeners “From down in Marathon up to the coast of Maine” in the hook-filled “Fish Porn.” The record, co-produced by veteran Coral Reefers, Michael Utley and Mac McAnally, opens with a barrel-house piano riff you might hear wafting over the sidewalks outside a New Orleans club on “University of Bourbon Street.” A horn section blast from the album’s first guest, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, bleeds into Buffett’s introductory line.

Pre-Order the new album “Equal Strain on All Parts” at Mailboat Records or Amazon.com

My Gummie Just Kicked In - Behind the Scenes -...