\n<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: Since this obituary was published, <\/em>the cause of Mr. Buffett\u2019s death<\/em><\/a> was reported to be <\/em>Merkel cell carcinoma<\/em><\/a>, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer that he had lived with for four years, according to <\/em>a statement<\/em><\/a> on his website. It also said he died at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on the East End of Long Island.<\/em><\/p>\n Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like \u201cMargaritaville\u201d and \u201cCheeseburger in Paradise\u201d made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His death was announced in a statement on his website<\/a>. It did not say where he died or specify a cause. Mr. Buffett had rescheduled a series of concerts this spring, saying he had been hospitalized, although he offered no details. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett\u2019s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, salt water and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead\u2019s Deadheads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, and \u201cMargaritaville,\u201d his 1977 breakthrough hit, was his only single to reach the pop Top 10.<\/p>\n \u201cI blew out my flip-flop\/Stepped on a pop-top\/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,\u201d he sang woozily to the song\u2019s lilting Caribbean rhythms. \u201cBut there\u2019s booze in the blender\/And soon it will render\/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Buffett\u2019s music was often described as \u201cGulf and western\u201d \u2014 a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like \u201cCome Monday\u201d<\/a> and \u201cA Pirate Looks at Forty\u201d<\/a> and clever up-tempo numbers like \u201cCheeseburger in Paradise.\u201d<\/a> Some were both, like \u201cSon of a Son of a Sailor,\u201d<\/a> a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett\u2019s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just a son of a son, son of a son\/ The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett\u2019s muses, and no place was more important than Key West, Fla. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker<\/a>, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn\u2019t really successful yet,\u201d Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post<\/a>. \u201cBut I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The locales provided Mr. Buffett with more than just a breezy sailing life and grist for his songwriting. They were also the impetus for the creation of a tropical-themed business empire that included a restaurant franchise, a hotel chain and boutique tequila, T-shirt and footwear lines, all of which made him a millionaire hundreds of times over.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done a bit of smugglin\u2019, and I\u2019ve run my share of grass,\u201d Mr. Buffett wrote in \u201cA Pirate Looks at Forty,\u201d sung in the voice of his friend Phillip Clark, a modern-day buccaneer \u2014 who inspired not just the song but also, to a lesser extent, Mr. Buffett\u2019s own early entrepreneurial pursuits.<\/p>\n \u201cI made enough money to buy Miami,\u201d he went on, \u201cBut I pissed it away so fast\/Never meant to last\/Never meant to last.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Clark may have squandered his wealth by the time he turned 40, but Mr. Buffett proved a shrewd manager of his considerable fortune; Forbes this year estimated his net worth at $1 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Mr. Buffett is a pirate, to borrow one of his favorite images, it is hardly because of his days palling around with dope smugglers in the Caribbean,\u201d the critic Anthony DeCurtis wrote in a 1999 essay for The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cHe is a pirate in the way that Bill Gates and Donald Trump have styled themselves, as plundering rebels, visionary artists of the deal, not bound by the societal restrictions meant for smaller, more careful men.\u201d<\/p>\n (The comparison to Mr. Trump was strictly financial; Mr. Buffett was a Democrat.)<\/p>\n Mr. Buffett was also an accomplished author; he was one of only a few writers (the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and William Styron are among the others) to top both The Times\u2019s fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. By the time he wrote \u201cTales From Margaritaville\u201d (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he once embraced.<\/p>\n \u201cI could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy,\u201d he told The Washington Post in 1989. \u201cI\u2019m not old, but I\u2019m getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun \u2014 all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI still have a very happy life,\u201d he went on. \u201cI just don\u2019t do the things I used to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n James William Buffett was born on Dec. 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Miss., one of three children of Mary Loraine (Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr. Both parents were longtime employees of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company. His father was a manager of government contracts, and his mother, known simply as Peets, was an assistant director of industrial relations.<\/p>\n Jimmy was raised Roman Catholic in Mobile, Ala., where he took up the trombone at St. Ignatius Catholic School. He went to high school at another Catholic institution in Mobile, the McGill Institute.<\/p>\n In 1964, he enrolled in classes at Auburn University. He flunked out and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi. He also began performing in local nightclubs. He graduated with a degree in history in 1969 before moving to the French Quarter of New Orleans and playing in a cover band on Bourbon Street.<\/p>\n He moved to Nashville in 1970, hoping to make it as a country singer while working as a journalist for Billboard magazine. (Mr. Buffett was credited with breaking the story about the disbanding of the pioneering bluegrass duo Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.) \u201cDown to Earth,\u201d his debut album, was released on Andy Williams\u2019s Barnaby label that year. It sold a reported 324 copies.<\/p>\n Mr. Buffett\u2019s second album for Barnaby, \u201cHigh Cumberland Jubilee,\u201d went unreleased until 1976, long after he had signed with ABC-Dunhill and recorded \u201cA White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean\u201d (1973), which featured the debauched party anthem \u201cWhy Don\u2019t We Get Drunk.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Buffett had a fondness for puns. The title \u201cA White Sport Coat\u201d was inspired by the song \u201cA White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),\u201d a 1957 pop hit for the country singer Marty Robbins. Another album was called \u201cLast Mango in Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Buffett\u2019s album \u201cLiving and Dying in \u00be Time,\u201d released in 1974, included a version of the comedian Lord Buckley\u2019s \u201cGod\u2019s Own Drunk.\u201d \u201cCome Monday,\u201d a lovelorn track from that record, became his first Top 40 hit.<\/p>\n \u201cA1A,\u201d also from 1974, was named for the oceanfront highway that runs along Florida\u2019s Atlantic coastline. It was Mr. Buffett\u2019s first album to contain references to Key West and maritime life. But it was his platinum-selling \u201cChanges in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes\u201d (1977), which contained the blockbuster hit \u201cMargaritaville,\u201d that finally catapulted him to stardom. \u201cFins,\u201d another hit single, was released in 1979.<\/p>\n A series of popular releases followed, culminating in 1985 with \u201cSongs You Know by Heart,\u201d a compilation of Mr. Buffett\u2019s most beloved songs to date. It became the best selling album of his career.<\/p>\n Mr. Buffett also opened the first of his many Margaritaville stores in 1985. That was the year that the bassist Timothy B. Schmit, who is best known as a member of the Eagles but was then with the Coral Reefer Band, coined the term Parrot Heads to describe Mr. Buffett\u2019s staunch legion of fans, the bulk of whom were baby boomers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A supporter of conservationist causes, Mr. Buffett moved away from the Keys in the late 1970s because of the area\u2019s increasing commercialization. He initially relocated to Aspen, Colo., before making his home on St. Barts in the Caribbean. He also had houses in Palm Beach, Fla., and Sag Harbor, N.Y., on eastern Long Island.<\/p>\n In addition to touring and recording, activities he pursued into the 2020s, Mr. Buffett wrote music for movies like \u201cFast Times at Ridgemont High\u201d and \u201cUrban Cowboy.\u201d He also appeared in movies, including \u201cRancho Deluxe\u201d and \u201cJurassic World,\u201d and on television shows, including the \u201cHawaii Five-O\u201d revival of the 2010s, on which he starred as the helicopter pilot Frank Bama, a character from his best-selling 1992 novel, \u201cWhere Is Joe Merchant?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n An avid pilot, Mr. Buffett owned several aircraft and often flew himself to his shows. In 1994, he crashed one of his airplanes in waters near Nantucket, Mass., while taking off. He survived the accident, swimming to safety with only minor injuries.<\/p>\n In 1996, another of his planes, Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by the Jamaican police, who suspected the craft was being used to smuggle marijuana. Onboard the airplane, which sustained little damage, were Bono of U2; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; and Mr. Buffett\u2019s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later admitted that the incident was a case of mistaken identity, inspiring Mr. Buffett to write the song \u201cJamaica Mistaica,\u201d<\/a> a droll sendup of the affair.<\/p>\n He is survived by his wife, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett; two daughters, Savanah Jane Buffett and Sarah Buffett; a son, Cameron; two grandsons; and two sisters, Lucy and Laurie Buffett.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Buffett was asked about a previous remark in which he somewhat incongruously cited the wholesome choral director Mitch Miller<\/a> and the marauding Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte as two of his greatest inspirations.<\/p>\n \u201cMitch Miller, for sure,\u201d Mr. Buffett said, doubtless in acknowledgment of the way his own fans sang along with him at concerts, as Mr. Miller\u2019s television audiences were asked to. \u201cIn the old days: \u2018Sing Along with Mitch\u2019? Who didn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut Jean Lafitte was my hero as a romantic character,\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019m not sure he was a musical influence. His lifestyle influenced me, most definitely, \u2019cause I\u2019m the very opposite of Mitch Miller.\u201d<\/p>\n Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Son of a son of a sailor,\u201d he sang. \u201cThe sea\u2019s in my veins, my tradition remains\/I\u2019m just glad I don\u2019t live in a trailer.\u201d<\/p>\n