Click the link to read the obit on The Los Angeles Times website (Stephen Thomas Erlewine). Here’s an excerpt:
[Jerry Jeff] Walker introduced Buffett to the music community in Miami, then did the same for him in Key West. Buffett said discovering the Florida Keys “changed my life.” Settling into Key West, he worked as second mate on a fishing charter while playing barrooms at night. Buffett soaked up stories from dope dealers, smugglers, hippies and hustlers who all acted as a collective muse for the singer-songwriter, planting the seeds for a singular music career and business empire based on living a white-sand-and-margarita-filled version of the American dream…
A storyteller who specialized in tales of beach bums, burnouts and small-time hustlers, Buffett chronicled coastal life with a light touch and an affectionate sense of humor. Developing a sun-bleached spin on country-rock that he’d wryly dub “gulf and western,” he first drifted into the mainstream with the easy-rolling “Come Monday” in 1974 but it was 1977’s “Margaritaville,” his lone Top 10 hit, that provided the foundation for the rest of his career…
Born in Pascagoula, Miss., on Christmas Day 1946, James William Buffett had wanderlust in his blood. His grandfather James Delaney Buffett captained a steamship, and his father served in the Army Corps of Engineers before raising his family in the gulf town of Mobile, Ala. Enamored of his grandfather’s stories of the sea, Buffett spent his childhood buried in books; his love of the sea and books remained lifelong. His love of music arrived later, when he learned how to play guitar while attending Auburn University. He hoped the instrument would help him meet girls…
“Margaritaville” entered the National Recording Registry in 2023. When asked by Rolling Stone in 2019 how he’d like to be remembered, he replied, “‘He had a good time and made a lot of people happy’ would be good.”