The Florida Legislature designated Friday, Aug. 30 as Jimmy Buffett Day earlier this year.
Samantha NeelyUSA TODAY NETWORK - Florida
It's been nearly a year since Florida lost its favorite tropical troubadour, Jimmy Buffett. Yet, Florida has certainly not stopped celebrating him and what he meant to the state's culture.
The Florida House of Representatives created an official day to honor the icon earlier this year, signing legislation to declare Aug. 30 as "Jimmy Buffett Day."
Buffett died on Sept. 2 of last year due tocomplications from Merkel-cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive skin cancer, with which he had been diagnosed four years earlier.
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“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” according to a statement posted toBuffett’s official websiteand social media pages following his death. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”
The resolution seeks to celebrate the life and music of Jimmy Buffett, whose "free-spirited life and significant contributions to national and state culture are commended and celebrated."
"Jimmy Buffett honed his art as a singer-songwriter in the bars of Key West," the resolution states. "And the laid-back island lifestyle of the Florida Keys was the foundation on which he built his signature tropical rock sound."
But what made Buffett so intertwined with Florida culture? Here's how Buffett became synonymous with the Sunshine State since his career started.
Buffett wasn't even born in Florida. Here's where his story starts
Despite what many think, Buffett isn't a native Floridian. The singer was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi Christmas Day 1946, and grew up in Mobile, Alabama.
He took up music while attending Alabama's Auburn University but flunked out due to his party lifestyle. According to the Fort Myers News-Press, he eventually graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
He soon started playing professionally in Nashville and worked as a stringer (a writer who usually gets paid by the story) for Billboard magazine for a short period of time. He also married his first wife, Margie Washichek,in 1969 in Tennessee.
When was Jimmy Buffett first introduced to Florida?
So how did Buffett find himself in Florida? While his music was not taking off in Nashville, he found his calling somewhere else — The Florida Keys.
According to the official Key West Margaritaville website, Buffett first was introduced to the Keys in 1972 when visiting his singer-songwriter friend, Jerry Jeff Walker, in Coconut Grove.It explained that Walker offered Buffett "refuge" since he was down on his luck after ending his marriage and not getting any offers for his music.
"After a week or two of Florida-orientation, they piled into 'Flying Lady,' Jerry Jeff's elegant silver and maroon '47 Packard sedan, for a drive southward. Jimmy Buffett had never before seen the Florida Keys," the website shared.
"Key West was an outpost over 100 miles from our mainland - closer to Cuba than to Florida - a place of fascinating history and charm, dependent upon the ocean for much of its income yet subject to the whims of weather and the perils of change. Jimmy's discovery of the island meant everything to the man."
He soon fully moved to the Keys and worked on a fishing boat during the day while playing throughout the town's streets at night.
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According to his website, that trip to the Keys changed his life and countless other lives in turn. Once moving to Florida, he was completely hooked and fully embraced the Key West lifestyle — both his songs and his casual uniform of Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip-flops.
Corey Malcom, lead historian in the Monroe County Library’s Florida Keys History Center, wrote about one of Buffett's first concerts in Key West; playing at Crazy Ophelia’s when he was 25-years-old. This performance received much praise and led to more gigs around town
The Florida Division of Arts further shares that his songwriting blossomed and he penned several of his most iconic hits while residing in the state.
The singer had enjoyed living part-time in Palm Beach since the 1970s. Buffett had been a staple of the South Florida community, owning a home in the Eden Properties neighborhood and dining at several local restaurants.
Buffett once told The Palm Beach Post aboutliving in Palm Beach: “No one bothers me. It’s amazing. I’m not on television and that’s the big difference. I can walk around with shocking anonymity. People don’t know who I am. I went to Disney World walking around the other day and was stopped twice.”
He sold his home in Palm Beach in 2020 for roughly $7 million.However, his family is said to own multiple properties in the Florida city.
'Margaritaville' is inspired by his time in Key West
“Margaritaville,” released on Feb. 14, 1977, quickly took on a life of its own, becoming a state of mind for those ”wastin’ away,” an excuse for a life of low-key fun and escapism for those “growing older, but not up.”
According to an interview with 60 Minutes, Buffett never expected the song to take off like it did. He has shared that he wrote the hit song while getting margaritas with a friend before flying back to the Keys.
"It was a hot day," the singertold the Arizona Republic in 2021. "And they were damn good margaritas. … And I kind of came up with that idea of this is just like Margarita-ville. She kind of laughed at that and put me on the plane. And I started working on it.”
What is Margaritaville? Is it in Florida?
Years later, his personal brand began expanding in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed stores and restaurants in Key West, followed in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café nearby. The brand has since expanded to dozens of categories, such as resorts, restaurants, food items, apparel and even cruise lines.
But where exactly is Margaritaville? Just like in the song, it is inspired by Florida.
“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett explained to the Arizona Republic. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”
Another Buffett hit has an extra special Florida connection
Buffett isrumored to have written his hit song“Cheeseburger in Paradise” for the menu item at a famous Southwest Florida hotspot. The story behind Buffett's famous hit about a favorite food item goes like this:
He supposedly was out sailing in the Gulf when he docked his boat on Cabbage Key, a small island located off Lee County's Pine Island and only accessible by boat.
Buffett headed toward TheCabbage Key Inn & Restaurant, an 80-year-old business known especially for its "bar with lots of money on the walls."
Likely hungry and looking for a place to eat and enjoy a cold one, Buffett ordered a cheeseburger that probably tasted like paradise after a few hours on the water.
Live out a Jimmy Buffett song at these 10 Florida spots
It's time to “go where it’s warm" for those wanting to celebrate Jimmy Buffett Day properly and live out his lyrics. From the streets of Key West to the harbors of Apalachicola, here are USA Today's 10 Best spots in Florida to do so:
- “Stranded on a sandbar” — Cayo Costa
- “But there’s this one particular harbor” — Apalachicola
- “I’ve got to fly to Saint Somewhere” — St. Augustine
- “Got to stop wishing, got to go fishing” — Destin
- “It’s five o’clock somewhere” — Jupiter
- “Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville” — Fort Myers Beach
- “There’s a woman goin’ crazy on Caroline Street” — Key West
- “You got fins to the left, fins to the right” — Orlando
- “Strollin' down the avenue that's known as A1A” — Vero Beach
- “Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along. I won't do anything wrong.” — Space Coast
Contributing: Charles Runnells, Fort Myers News-Press
