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Jimmy Buffett: Escape Artist, Incorporated. · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
0:20
Speaker 1: story about escape, about drug trafficking, about God's own badass,
0:26
Speaker 1: about dodging bullets with bono and dodging life's restrictions. This
0:32
Speaker 1: is a story about an artist I used to despise
0:35
Speaker 1: but now kind of love. And this is a story
0:39
Speaker 1: about Jimmy Buffett. So yes, that means it's a story
0:43
Speaker 1: about great music. Unlike that music I played for you
0:47
Speaker 1: at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
0:51
Speaker 1: That was a preset loop from my melotron called buford
0:54
Speaker 1: Can't Fish MK Two. I played you that loop because
1:00
Speaker 1: I can't afford the rights to Torn Between Two Lovers
1:02
Speaker 1: by Mary McGregor. And why would I play you that
1:06
Speaker 1: slice of you know, I've never actually heard the song
1:09
Speaker 1: before cheese. Could I afford it? Because that was the
1:14
Speaker 1: number one song in America on February fourteenth, nineteen seventy seven,
1:19
Speaker 1: And that was the day a son of a son
1:21
Speaker 1: of a sailor released a song called Margueriteville and changed
1:25
Speaker 1: his life forever. On this episode, drug trafficking, a badass
1:31
Speaker 1: so bad is still walking tall Bono, dodging bullets, music
1:35
Speaker 1: History's Escape artist Jimmy Buffer.
1:38
Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan in this, this Disgraceland.
2:08
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett was not at all what you think unless
2:12
Speaker 1: you're ahead. I don't mean a Parrothead necessarily, but a
2:16
Speaker 1: deep Buffet heead one who knows is pre Parrothead history.
2:21
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett was an all American badass. Jimmy Buffett swam
2:25
Speaker 1: the Key West Flats with sharks. Jimmy Buffett once fought
2:29
Speaker 1: off a bear with nothing but a loss salt shaker
2:31
Speaker 1: and his wit. Jimmy Buffett wrestled with Hemingway's ghosts and won.
2:36
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett drank Tom mcguain under the table, saw more
2:39
Speaker 1: lines of coke than Jim Harrison's one good eye. Jimmy
2:42
Speaker 1: Buffett's early Nashville records proved that he was Merle Haggard.
2:46
Speaker 1: No Johnny paycheck. Jimmy Buffett knows where Bumfardo is buried. Okay,
2:53
Speaker 1: I'm exaggerating, but not by much. Also, who's Bumfardo you ask?
2:58
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. Jimmy Buffett, the Jimmy Buffett that
3:02
Speaker 1: I thought I knew, the one pedaling not just songs,
3:05
Speaker 1: but margarita's and cheeseburgers, and T shirts and beer and yes,
3:09
Speaker 1: even lost shakers of salt. That dude's past is not
3:13
Speaker 1: only fascinating, it directly explains how this super charming, legendarily mustachioed,
3:20
Speaker 1: pretty ok seventy singer songwriter was able to create a
3:23
Speaker 1: billion dollar empire out of escapism. Because before we made it,
3:29
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett had to escape himself. Key West aka Bone Island,
3:43
Speaker 1: where Florida runs out of road, where the ocean laps
3:46
Speaker 1: pink and blue scaffolding for smugglers nowhere left to run.
3:51
Speaker 1: If you've made it this far, to the absolute end
3:54
Speaker 1: of American Earth, they're likely not going to catch you.
3:58
Speaker 1: You've escaped, Except that Jimmy Buffett wasn't running away from anything. Instead,
4:04
Speaker 1: he was running towards something. He just didn't know it
4:07
Speaker 1: at the time, nineteen seventy two, the smugglers were brazen.
4:14
Speaker 1: This was Key West in the early seventies. It was
4:17
Speaker 1: a brazen kind of town. And Jimmy Buffett watched drug
4:21
Speaker 1: traffickers unload the dope straight off the boats onto the
4:24
Speaker 1: shrimp ducks right there in the middle of the day.
4:27
Speaker 1: It was so hot it felt like the sun had
4:29
Speaker 1: a twin. Jimmy was a shrimper, he'd grown used to
4:33
Speaker 1: the heat, but this was something else. He stood there,
4:38
Speaker 1: twenty four years old, recently divorced, sweating bullets, long hair,
4:44
Speaker 1: bushy mustache, cut off jeans, nothing else, contemplating the dope
4:49
Speaker 1: on the dock. There was a lot of money in
4:51
Speaker 1: those packages, more money than he was earning from shrimping,
4:55
Speaker 1: and more than he was seeing pedaling songs over at
4:58
Speaker 1: the chart room at night Z. Far more money than
5:02
Speaker 1: he'd ever made in Nashville. The Giant's fist came through
5:07
Speaker 1: the half open passenger side window, quick landing hard on
5:11
Speaker 1: the side of Jimmy Buffet's publicis's face. Jimmy struggled drunkenly
5:16
Speaker 1: to get the car started. The giant now had the
5:18
Speaker 1: public's head cradled in his bear like paw and was pulling,
5:23
Speaker 1: slamming the man's face into the window. Jimmy fumbled with
5:27
Speaker 1: the ignition he was wasted. That was the problem. He
5:31
Speaker 1: and the publicist from BBC Records, the label had signed
5:33
Speaker 1: him on account of some natural recordings, were out celebrating.
5:37
Speaker 1: They had just tied one on at Roger Miller's King
5:40
Speaker 1: of the Road Motoring, and they stumbled out blotto. Then
5:44
Speaker 1: Jimmy jumped up on top of a park Cadillac, this
5:47
Speaker 1: giant of a man's Cadillac, apparently, But this wasn't any
5:53
Speaker 1: ordinary giant. Jimmy would later learn that this was Beauford Pusser.
6:00
Speaker 1: If Jimmy Buffett was, as he claimed in one of
6:02
Speaker 1: his songs, God's own drunk, then Baufford Pusser was God's
6:06
Speaker 1: own badass. As the former sheriff of McNairy County and Tennessee,
6:12
Speaker 1: he'd survived two assassination attempts, He'd been shot stabbed too
6:16
Speaker 1: many times to count. His wife got murdered in Old
6:19
Speaker 1: Bufford here when at her killers were a determined vengeance
6:22
Speaker 1: that was and still is the stuff of legend. Baufford
6:26
Speaker 1: Pusser was so bad ass they made one movie, two
6:30
Speaker 1: sequels in a TV show after him Walking Tall. Hell,
6:34
Speaker 1: they're still making movies about him with the rock. But
6:38
Speaker 1: at this moment, Baufford Pusser was training his vengeance on
6:42
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett, and Jimmy Buffett thankfully got his car and
6:46
Speaker 1: gear and escape. He escaped. Not just the violent clutches
6:52
Speaker 1: of Beaufford Pusser, but the soul crush of Nashville. Jimmy
6:58
Speaker 1: arrived in Music City after a short stint in New Orleans,
7:01
Speaker 1: where he saw firsthand how to entertain people hell bent
7:05
Speaker 1: on losing themselves in music. It was like that back
7:08
Speaker 1: home in Mississippi too. It was like that all over,
7:11
Speaker 1: he imagined. But Nashville, Nashville was tough. As a songwriter,
7:18
Speaker 1: Jimmy didn't learn much aside from the fact that Nashville
7:21
Speaker 1: didn't think he'd fit in. He was forced to pick
7:24
Speaker 1: up work as a music journalist, penning notices for Billboard magazine,
7:28
Speaker 1: and he did learn from his time at Billboard, not
7:31
Speaker 1: necessarily how to write or report. Instead, he learned that
7:36
Speaker 1: the music business is designed to steal from artists, and
7:40
Speaker 1: that the music business is as craven as the smuggling
7:43
Speaker 1: business off the coast of Key West. Different commodities, different deves,
7:49
Speaker 1: but crimes. Nonetheless, in the music business, the artists are
7:54
Speaker 1: the commodity, and like shrimp off the coast of the Keys,
7:58
Speaker 1: there is always more to harvest. So if Jimmy Buffett
8:02
Speaker 1: as an artist was going to be treated as a commodity,
8:06
Speaker 1: then he was at least going to control the commodity.
8:09
Speaker 1: It was a valuable lesson, except the reality was harsh,
8:12
Speaker 1: because there's no value in controlling something nobody wants to buy.
8:17
Speaker 1: So Jimmy split Nashville, but not without a record contract,
8:21
Speaker 1: and landed in Key West, where he quickly learned that
8:24
Speaker 1: he was the only product in town. Here, songwriters were scarce,
8:31
Speaker 1: but writers were not. After locking down a steady ish
8:36
Speaker 1: gig at the Charthhouse, where he played for tips and
8:39
Speaker 1: goodwill and well, let's face it, the sheer fun of it,
8:42
Speaker 1: Jimmy quickly fell in with Key West's literary crowd, guys
8:46
Speaker 1: like the celebrated author Tom mcguain, Jim Harrison, the future
8:50
Speaker 1: author of Legends of the Fall, the novelists and poet
8:53
Speaker 1: Richard Brodigan who'd been sought out by the Beatles sometime earlier,
8:57
Speaker 1: and Carl Hyason, who would go on to write Stripped,
9:00
Speaker 1: Bad Monkey and a host of other bestsellers. Aside from writing,
9:05
Speaker 1: these guys endeavored to drink all the alcohol and do
9:08
Speaker 1: all the drugs Key West could hold. They formed an
9:11
Speaker 1: unofficial social club called Club Mandible, their mandate to inebriate
9:17
Speaker 1: in Fornice and Jimmy Buffett fit right in time skipped
9:23
Speaker 1: along hazily in Key West. Nineteen seventy two turned into
9:27
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, and Jimmy Buffett sang songs at night,
9:31
Speaker 1: worked sometimes during the day, and he wrote when he
9:34
Speaker 1: was inspired, making his way back and forth to Nashville
9:38
Speaker 1: to record in her studios. His third album, seventy three
9:43
Speaker 1: is A White Coat and a Pink Crustacean was more
9:46
Speaker 1: island than country. It wasn't novelty, but it was novel
9:50
Speaker 1: and as such hard for the record label to find
9:53
Speaker 1: an audience for money was tight. Jimmy wondered what it
9:58
Speaker 1: would be like a guy he knew who told him
10:01
Speaker 1: he could make twice as much as he got paid
10:03
Speaker 1: for his last record on just one run. Buying that
10:07
Speaker 1: Boston Whaler would be no problem and he could just
10:12
Speaker 1: escape drift, Forget it all the grind and the unending
10:17
Speaker 1: pressure of proving to the world that you have something
10:20
Speaker 1: to say, something different, something worth hearing, and the mind
10:25
Speaker 1: fuck of knowing that that same thing that makes you different,
10:28
Speaker 1: so worthy of listening to, is the same thing that
10:31
Speaker 1: makes it so hard for people to hear you. It
10:35
Speaker 1: was enough to want to strip it all off, leave
10:37
Speaker 1: it lying on the beach, step out onto that smuggler's boat,
10:41
Speaker 1: and never pick up a guitar again. Jimmy Buffett was
11:12
Speaker 1: lost at sea, literally stranded in a tiny dinghy that
11:18
Speaker 1: had been poorly nodded to a bigger boat, the boat
11:21
Speaker 1: that the party had been on last night. Jimmy went
11:24
Speaker 1: to sleep in the dinghy and woke up floating in
11:26
Speaker 1: the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by nothing but
11:30
Speaker 1: water and horizon in every direction above. The sun baked
11:35
Speaker 1: down upon him, and there was nowhere to go. Which
11:39
Speaker 1: way was home? Which way spelled death? Jimmy didn't know.
11:44
Speaker 1: Then from far off, Jimmy heard it the buzz of
11:48
Speaker 1: the cigarette boat's engine. Traffickers. Jimmy flagged them down, and
11:53
Speaker 1: thankfully Jimmy knew them so incredibly they slowed when they
11:58
Speaker 1: saw him, and, despite being in the middle of a run,
12:01
Speaker 1: pointed Jimmy toward home. Jimmy had had a hell of
12:08
Speaker 1: a run. In the four years since he arrived in
12:11
Speaker 1: Key West. He released four full length albums, A White
12:15
Speaker 1: Sports Code in a Pink Crustacean, Living and Dying in
12:19
Speaker 1: Three to four Times, a one a and Havana dreaming.
12:23
Speaker 1: He'd scored the excellent documentary Tarpin, filmed in Key West.
12:27
Speaker 1: It's about Key West Flats Tarpin fishermen, many of them
12:30
Speaker 1: as friends, and he provided the songs for the soundtrack
12:34
Speaker 1: to a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Rancho Deluxe,
12:38
Speaker 1: which was scripted by Jimmy's Key West buddy, the novelist
12:41
Speaker 1: Tom mcguain. That six albums in four years plus touring,
12:47
Speaker 1: if there was such a thing as island time, Jimmy
12:50
Speaker 1: Buffett's version included hustle. It was that entrepreneurial instinct Jimmy
12:55
Speaker 1: learned back in Nashville, and prior to that from his
12:59
Speaker 1: family upbringing, being the son of a son of a sailor.
13:02
Speaker 1: As he said, no one was coming to save his career.
13:06
Speaker 1: It was just him and he was close. If he
13:09
Speaker 1: wanted to escape the Nashville grind, if he wanted to
13:12
Speaker 1: escape the prospect of living a life in the straight
13:15
Speaker 1: world with a nine to five, if he didn't want
13:17
Speaker 1: to spend the rest of his days singing in bars
13:19
Speaker 1: for tips, hustling one nighters on college campuses, or worse,
13:24
Speaker 1: propped up against the beach bar yammering on about what
13:27
Speaker 1: could have been. Then something needed to change. Jimmy Buffett
13:32
Speaker 1: needed to turn his hustle into record buyers. Back in
13:38
Speaker 1: Key West, everything was changing. Bumfardo was missing the local
13:44
Speaker 1: fire chief, the one who somehow could afford a Cadillac
13:47
Speaker 1: on a fireman's salary, a lime green Cadillac, a car
13:51
Speaker 1: that he paired with his fire engine red suits and
13:54
Speaker 1: his rose colored sunglasses. Florida's Governor, Reuben aske You had
13:59
Speaker 1: had enough of lacks attitude on drug trafficking and put
14:03
Speaker 1: together a drug squad operation Counch. When state narcotics agents
14:08
Speaker 1: swept through town in the fall of nineteen seventy five,
14:11
Speaker 1: no one was surprised when Bumfardo got popped, along with
14:14
Speaker 1: nineteen others suspected drug dealers. Bum Fardo was convicted for
14:19
Speaker 1: dealing coke and pot, but before his sentencing, he disappeared, vanished.
14:25
Speaker 1: No one knew where he was. Some Key West residents
14:29
Speaker 1: told themselves bum grabbed his go bag and split for
14:32
Speaker 1: South America, but most believed something else. Bumfardo was shark
14:37
Speaker 1: bait and gone. Maybe gone. Jimmy Buffett laughed it off,
14:41
Speaker 1: wearing a wears Bumfardo shirt on stage until he was
14:45
Speaker 1: pulled aside by a local in the know, and this
14:48
Speaker 1: fellow quietly told Jimmy that if he himself didn't like
14:51
Speaker 1: the idea of being chummed for bol Sharks, then he'd
14:53
Speaker 1: be wise to never wear that shirt again. After Bum disappeared,
15:00
Speaker 1: everything changed in Key West. With the drug dealers off
15:04
Speaker 1: the docks, the city instituted a revitalization project in nineteen
15:09
Speaker 1: seventy six, and downtown was cleaned up and a new
15:12
Speaker 1: tourism marketing plan brought in college kids, gays, and even
15:16
Speaker 1: vacationing families. There was now a strange air of overt
15:21
Speaker 1: commercialism blanketing Jimmy Buffet's adopted hometown as he set out
15:25
Speaker 1: to make his next record, Changes in Latitudes. Changes in
15:30
Speaker 1: Attitudes was true to its title. Like Key West in
15:34
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, this record was about change. It was
15:39
Speaker 1: Jimmy's first to fully feature the Coral Reefer Band, the
15:43
Speaker 1: group that was once a fictional group of musicians Jimmy
15:46
Speaker 1: had conjured up slowly grew into an actual touring band,
15:50
Speaker 1: then a gaggle of musicians who accompanied Jimmy along with
15:53
Speaker 1: other session players in Nashville and finally into a band
15:56
Speaker 1: in the truest sense. On Changes, the album, unlike Jimmy's
16:01
Speaker 1: previous long Players, wasn't recorded in Nashville. It was made
16:05
Speaker 1: in Florida in Miami at Criteria four sixty one Ocean Boulevard,
16:12
Speaker 1: where Eric Clapton had recently found greatness. On Changes, Jimmy
16:17
Speaker 1: collaborated with producer Norbert Putnam, whose own genius stroke was
16:22
Speaker 1: hearing Jimmy Buffett for who he was not just a
16:25
Speaker 1: singer songwriter, not Jim Crochey or some flip flop Chris Christofferson.
16:30
Speaker 1: He was something totally different. He was Jimmy Buffett, an
16:34
Speaker 1: artist with a completely unique point of view on the world,
16:37
Speaker 1: one that was heavily influenced by the end of the
16:39
Speaker 1: world that he'd escaped to Key West. His lyrics reflected
16:44
Speaker 1: that island escapism, so the album needed to sound like
16:48
Speaker 1: island escapism. It needed to sound like Jimmy Buffett, which
16:52
Speaker 1: is to say, it needed to sound like a dude
16:54
Speaker 1: who just fell out of a hammock and hit his
16:56
Speaker 1: head on a tequila bottle on his way down before
16:58
Speaker 1: shaking it off, grabbing his easy one and rolling a spliff,
17:02
Speaker 1: Norbert Putnam went to work throwing tropical sounding instrumentation all
17:06
Speaker 1: over the recordings he Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band
17:10
Speaker 1: were putting down at Criteria congas, steel drums and overall
17:15
Speaker 1: laid back feel to everything. And then Jimmy brought in
17:20
Speaker 1: a new song and nothing would ever be the same again.
17:28
Speaker 1: Margaritaville is a fictional place we all know. The sun
17:31
Speaker 1: never stops shining, and the whaler's music plays softly in
17:35
Speaker 1: the distance. Men and women, Married couples dance slowly, connected
17:39
Speaker 1: in ways they haven't been in years. The beer is
17:43
Speaker 1: ice cold and the cocktails are just sweet enough, and
17:46
Speaker 1: nothing ever runs out. The food puts you taste buds
17:49
Speaker 1: to work somehow. The cheeseburgers don't even make you fat.
17:53
Speaker 1: The bartender is a poet and flirts just enough to
17:56
Speaker 1: let you know you still got it going on, but
17:58
Speaker 1: not enough to piss off your spouse. And there are
18:01
Speaker 1: no hangovers, just bloody Mary's in a short walk to
18:04
Speaker 1: the beach, where a rejuvenating dip and coral blue seawater awaits. Shoes, shirts, hell,
18:10
Speaker 1: even shorts are all optional. What isn't optional, however, is
18:16
Speaker 1: a relaxation. You feel like your best self in Margaritaville.
18:20
Speaker 1: No boss, no commute, no kids, no pressure, no problems.
18:27
Speaker 1: Except Margaritaville wasn't really this at all. Margaritaville was Jimmy Buffett,
18:33
Speaker 1: mercilessly hungover after a gig in Texas, killing time in
18:37
Speaker 1: a Mexican strip mall restaurant before a flight, trying to
18:40
Speaker 1: drink away his headache with bottomless Margarita's while writing the
18:44
Speaker 1: lyrics to a new song of his called Wealth. Why
18:46
Speaker 1: not Margaritaville. That's where the song sprang from. The escapism
18:54
Speaker 1: you hear in the storytelling of that song's lyrics, the
18:57
Speaker 1: half a fuck up culpability of the protagonists. Some people
19:00
Speaker 1: say it's a woman to blame, but I know it's
19:02
Speaker 1: my own damn fault. That's Jimmy Buffett's genius, pulling that
19:07
Speaker 1: story so simple, yet so layered and so different from
19:11
Speaker 1: its actual place of origin, and turning it into something else,
19:15
Speaker 1: something so powerful. That was only part of Jimmy Buffett's superpower.
19:22
Speaker 1: The other part was what Jimmy Buffett eventually did with
19:25
Speaker 1: that song. Not only was it a hit, the signature
19:29
Speaker 1: song off of changes Margueriteville rocketed him to a level
19:33
Speaker 1: of fame that until then had eluded him. It was
19:36
Speaker 1: the artistic spark that launched a commercial empire and the
19:40
Speaker 1: level of escapism Jimmy Buffett never could have imagined. We'll
19:51
Speaker 1: be right back after this. We're We're where. One hit song, Margeritaville,
20:03
Speaker 1: changed Jimmy Buffett's life. Released in nineteen seventy seven on
20:09
Speaker 1: his seventh album, the song charted higher than any of
20:12
Speaker 1: Jimmy's previous singles. Margaritaville, despite its hungover origins, nailed not
20:18
Speaker 1: only what Jimmy Buffett was all about, but what Jimmy
20:21
Speaker 1: Buffett had to offer a break and escape from the grind,
20:26
Speaker 1: and it opened him up to a much larger audience.
20:30
Speaker 1: Throughout the late seventies and early eighties, Jimmy shows began
20:33
Speaker 1: to take on something akin to Grateful Dead concerts, but
20:37
Speaker 1: without the darkness. Jimmy's fans weren't zonked out deadheads. They were,
20:41
Speaker 1: as Jimmy's bassist at the time, the former Eagle, the
20:44
Speaker 1: Great Timothy B. Schmidt, coined them, parrotheads. Parrotheads are a
20:50
Speaker 1: very specific type of rock and roll fan. First of all,
20:55
Speaker 1: they're Jimmy Buffett fans, the second they're shameless dorks, and
21:00
Speaker 1: that in the best possible way. There's no shame in
21:02
Speaker 1: wearing whatever you want in public, even if that means
21:05
Speaker 1: a Hulu skirt and a gaudy Hawaiian shirt in the
21:07
Speaker 1: middle of October. That's kind of the point. Jimmy Buffett
21:11
Speaker 1: shows are all about escaping the confines that prevent you
21:14
Speaker 1: from wearing whatever the hell you want and having fun
21:16
Speaker 1: on a work night in the middle of October. There's
21:19
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that, despite the fact that every bit
21:22
Speaker 1: of fashion sense I have has led me to rebel
21:24
Speaker 1: against this tribe for as long as I can remember.
21:27
Speaker 1: But now with age, unless punk rock piss and vinegar
21:31
Speaker 1: coursing through my veins, I kind of admire it. It's
21:34
Speaker 1: that hole so not cool. It's cool type of thing,
21:37
Speaker 1: and in my mind, nothing is cooler than not caring
21:40
Speaker 1: what other people think, which, in a weird way, is
21:42
Speaker 1: what your pediatrician or accountant or lawyer were doing back
21:45
Speaker 1: in the nineties and two thousands when they were going
21:48
Speaker 1: to Jimmy Buffett concerts dressed like a coconut and drag
21:52
Speaker 1: and of course the parrot Heeads leader himself, Jimmy Buffett
21:55
Speaker 1: was also a shameless stork, despite his cool seventies must
22:00
Speaker 1: dash and three inch in scene cut off jeans from
22:02
Speaker 1: back in the day. Jimmy was and always had been
22:05
Speaker 1: a shameless dork on stage. At least he was a
22:10
Speaker 1: ham My sense is that's who he was off stage
22:13
Speaker 1: as well, And again I mean that in the best way.
22:16
Speaker 1: Ask my wife who the biggest dork in the houses
22:18
Speaker 1: and she'll tell you it's me. And it's because I'm
22:20
Speaker 1: most comfortable at home for you to act and be
22:23
Speaker 1: however I want around my loved ones who accept me
22:25
Speaker 1: for who I am. I believe Jimmy Buffett acted this
22:28
Speaker 1: way too, except he did it on stage every night
22:31
Speaker 1: in front of sixty thousand people, which means Jimmy Buffett
22:34
Speaker 1: was totally authentic. And that tracks because it's the authentic
22:38
Speaker 1: creators and artists who developed the most devoted fans, Just
22:42
Speaker 1: as Jimmy Buffett did with his Parrot Heeads. They took
22:45
Speaker 1: their cue from Jimmy not only in fashion and they
22:48
Speaker 1: exaggerated that whole Key West casual thing to the nth degree,
22:52
Speaker 1: but also in attitude. They bought concert tickets and records
22:57
Speaker 1: in T shirts, and when the money started flowing for
23:00
Speaker 1: real in the mid eighties, Jimmy recalled those Nashville days
23:03
Speaker 1: and the lesson he learned about control. He invested his
23:06
Speaker 1: hard earned capital into himself first. Before even the success
23:11
Speaker 1: of Margaritaville, Jimmy realized he was getting hosed on merch
23:15
Speaker 1: sales by bootleggers, so he opened his own Beach Them
23:18
Speaker 1: Merchandise T shirt shop in Key West in the late seventies.
23:22
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, he took a big swing and
23:25
Speaker 1: expanded the T shirt shop into the Margeritaville store and cafe.
23:29
Speaker 1: Now he was serving food and drinks to fans and tourists.
23:33
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, Jimmy launched his own record label,
23:36
Speaker 1: Margeriteville Records, as an imprint of MCA, seizing not only
23:40
Speaker 1: creative control of his own music, but a bigger piece
23:43
Speaker 1: of the pie as well. This would last for ten
23:46
Speaker 1: years until in nineteen ninety nine, Jimmy started Mailboat Records
23:50
Speaker 1: to release his music independently. Mail Boat went on to
23:54
Speaker 1: release records by artist Jimmy l liked, Boz Skaggs, Sammy Hagard,
23:58
Speaker 1: def Leppard Walter Becker in More. In the year two thousand,
24:02
Speaker 1: Jimmy opened to Margaritaville restaurant in Casino in Las Vegas.
24:06
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, he launched Margaritaville Tequila. He
24:09
Speaker 1: followed that with a hotel in Pensacola, Flora in twenty eleven,
24:13
Speaker 1: and a resort in Orlando in twenty eighteen. And along
24:16
Speaker 1: the way he launched everything from the wildly successful land
24:19
Speaker 1: Shark Lagger to beach chairs, flip flops, frozen foods in
24:23
Speaker 1: CBD gummies. In nineteen ninety six, this billion dollar empire
24:28
Speaker 1: in the making was doing more than keeping this son
24:31
Speaker 1: of a son of a sailor afloat. That January, Jimmy
24:37
Speaker 1: was in the air piloting his new plane, nineteen fifty
24:40
Speaker 1: four Grummin HU sixteen Albatross seaplane. His passengers were none
24:46
Speaker 1: other than U two's Bono, Bono's wife and their two
24:49
Speaker 1: young children, aged six and three. Jimmy was held ban
24:54
Speaker 1: on landing in this particular area of Jamaica because he
24:58
Speaker 1: knew of a little place with the perfect chicken, jerk
25:01
Speaker 1: chicken that would blow Bono's mind. Jimmy brought the plane
25:06
Speaker 1: down with ease, and the only problem was Jimmy didn't
25:09
Speaker 1: have permission to land. As Bono and his wife and
25:13
Speaker 1: children began to make their exit, that's when it happened.
25:18
Speaker 1: Bullets started flying. Bono, his kids, his wife. They dove
25:22
Speaker 1: back into the plane. One bullet cracked the plane's windshield,
25:26
Speaker 1: six others peppered the rest of the plane. Jamaican authorities
25:29
Speaker 1: descended upon the plane, looking for answers. Who were these
25:32
Speaker 1: drug traffickers and what made them think they could just
25:34
Speaker 1: land their plane unannounced at their small airport And there
25:38
Speaker 1: were no drug traffickers, of course, Jimmy Buffett had sworn
25:42
Speaker 1: off that career path years ago. There was only confusion.
25:46
Speaker 1: Bono was pissed, he his wife, his children. Once things
25:51
Speaker 1: were cleared up with authorities, they split from Miami, leaving
25:54
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett and his jerk chicken behind. How it all
25:58
Speaker 1: got to this point was anyone's guess. A pissed off
26:02
Speaker 1: pop star, violent Jamaican authorities firing bullets at his plane.
26:07
Speaker 1: There wasn't Jimmy's first escape from death's clutches. He'd survived
26:10
Speaker 1: the plane crash in Nantucket a couple of years prior.
26:14
Speaker 1: But where was all this going? And what was the point?
26:18
Speaker 1: More money for more toys, more business endeavors, more adventure,
26:24
Speaker 1: where's the fund? And escape if it ends up killing it?
26:28
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett needed his own change in latitude and attitude.
26:52
Speaker 1: Throughout the nineteen eighties and nineties, Jimmy Buffett steadily built
26:56
Speaker 1: a commercial empire that was on the verge of eclipsing
26:59
Speaker 1: his success as a musician. Not that he wasn't a
27:02
Speaker 1: success musically. He most certainly was. He sold records, he
27:06
Speaker 1: packed stadiums with fans, but he wasn't atop the zeitgeist,
27:10
Speaker 1: and he never really was sure. Margaritaville was a smash,
27:14
Speaker 1: but by the early two thousands that was decades in
27:18
Speaker 1: the rear view. And yes, Jimmy had his name and
27:21
Speaker 1: face on all manner of merchandise, but that was all
27:24
Speaker 1: fans service. Weird as it seems, even with all the success,
27:29
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett in two thousand and three was kind of
27:32
Speaker 1: a niche product. You know, it wasn't a niche product.
27:36
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three country music, the genre was
27:41
Speaker 1: doing hundreds of millions in concert tickets, in record sales,
27:44
Speaker 1: and resurging with youth and American culture beyond the Bible Belt,
27:48
Speaker 1: country radio stations were enjoying more success than they ever
27:52
Speaker 1: had in non traditional markets. Alan Jackson was one of
27:55
Speaker 1: country's biggest stars, so when he asked the question in
27:59
Speaker 1: his smash single It's five o'clock Somewhere of what would
28:02
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett do, country music fans everywhere wanted to know
28:06
Speaker 1: the answer. That drink they were planning on right after
28:09
Speaker 1: work depended on it, God damn it, and Jimmy Buffett
28:12
Speaker 1: didn't disappoint. He answered Alan Jackson in an impartial duet
28:16
Speaker 1: on the hit single, singing with his trademark term and
28:19
Speaker 1: Island Ease, and he was instantly introduced to an entire
28:23
Speaker 1: new generation of fans. The song was a smash hit.
28:28
Speaker 1: It spent eight weeks at number one on the Billboard
28:30
Speaker 1: Country Charts. At Jimmy's name and voice, who were suddenly
28:33
Speaker 1: within earshot of anyone in a parking lot before a
28:36
Speaker 1: sporting event, or at a beach, or at a bar
28:38
Speaker 1: on a Friday afternoon, getting out of work and in
28:41
Speaker 1: rush hour traffic with a radio on, trying to escape
28:44
Speaker 1: the confines of their adult lives, and the song helped
28:48
Speaker 1: Jimmy escape once again. It helped him level up from
28:52
Speaker 1: being the flip flop adventurer with a devoted but niche
28:55
Speaker 1: fan base to national treasure status, a sort of half stone,
29:00
Speaker 1: half loaded poet, laureate country star for partiers everywhere, the
29:04
Speaker 1: guy from that song. No, not that one, the other one.
29:07
Speaker 1: That one, No, the other one. Jimmy was no longer
29:10
Speaker 1: the Margueriteville guy. He was Jimmy Buffett. And with this
29:17
Speaker 1: new level of success, his business is soared, so much
29:21
Speaker 1: so that he became friends with another Buffett, the billionaire
29:25
Speaker 1: investor in philanthropists, Warren Buffett. I'm not sure what that
29:29
Speaker 1: means or why I think it's important to tell you that.
29:32
Speaker 1: Maybe because it underscores the fact that Jimmy Buffett was
29:35
Speaker 1: so much more than one thing, and that's a hard
29:39
Speaker 1: legacy to leave. There's an old interview with Jimmy's friend
29:44
Speaker 1: and brother in law, the writer Tom mcguain. He's not
29:47
Speaker 1: talking about Jimmy, but he's being interviewed about Key West,
29:51
Speaker 1: and he quotes French poet Stefan Malarme in part by paraphrasing,
29:56
Speaker 1: at a point, an artist dies, whatever his life was,
30:00
Speaker 1: whatever his work was becomes one thing. That's heavy because
30:06
Speaker 1: it means that being an artist is a curse of sorts.
30:11
Speaker 1: I don't know one artist, and I count myself among
30:14
Speaker 1: them who was just one thing. Jimmy Buffett's life and
30:19
Speaker 1: his work were about escaping the restrictions of being one thing. First,
30:24
Speaker 1: it was about escaping the limitations of being a Nashville artist,
30:28
Speaker 1: then a trafficker, or just another happy go lucky saloon
30:31
Speaker 1: singer in Keith West, or just a niche artist. Jimmy
30:36
Speaker 1: Buffett fought his way out of those traps with his music,
30:38
Speaker 1: and he inspired millions in the process. But Jimmy Buffett was,
30:43
Speaker 1: of course, more than just one thing. He was a musician,
30:47
Speaker 1: a fisherman, a sailor, a joker, God's own drunk, a bandleader,
30:53
Speaker 1: a businessman, a father, husband, brother, and an entertainer who
30:58
Speaker 1: gave millions of fans an offering from their stressful lives,
31:02
Speaker 1: even if it was just for one night in October
31:04
Speaker 1: and not on the shores of Key West as he
31:06
Speaker 1: experienced it. He played music until the end, even staging
31:12
Speaker 1: his last performance on an island soa Rhode Island, and
31:17
Speaker 1: then spending his last moments in twenty twenty three, before
31:20
Speaker 1: the cancer took him at age seventy six, surrounded by family,
31:25
Speaker 1: smiling and laughing, and then leaving it all on the
31:28
Speaker 1: beach and sailing away. I'm Jake Brennan and this is
31:37
Speaker 1: disgrace Land. All right. Thanks for checking out this episode
31:52
Speaker 1: of Disgraceland. Apple podcast listeners, make sure you have auto
31:56
Speaker 1: downloads turned on. Listen. Question of the week. Which artists
32:01
Speaker 1: did you at one point in time despise and now
32:04
Speaker 1: find yourself kind of digging a lot? Jimmy Buffett is
32:08
Speaker 1: that artist for me? All right? Let me know six
32:10
Speaker 1: one seven nine o six six six three eight voicemail
32:13
Speaker 1: and text to let me know which artist you didn't
32:15
Speaker 1: like before but now kind of can't get enough of.
32:17
Speaker 1: Six one seven nine o six six six three eight voicemail. Text.
32:20
Speaker 1: You might hear your answer on the after party bonus
32:22
Speaker 1: episode coming up right after this. Hit me up on
32:25
Speaker 1: the socials at Disgracelampoddisgrace Lampod at gmail dot com to
32:29
Speaker 1: email me all right, I getta go here comes from Credits.
32:34
Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
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Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis Credits for this episode can be
32:41
Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
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