Country Music

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Welcome back to 1982 and where we left off yesterday with Crystal Gayle’s album “True Love”, opening with a decidedly stronger (albeit still soft) rock edge with ’Our Love Is On The Fault Line’. This provided Crystal's biggest hit in 3 years, reaching #1 in both the U.S. and Canada plus #23 on the US AC chart. The highlight is Chris Leuzinger's countrified guitar solo, around 2:40 in the song. Also of note is the catchy lyric comparing a rocky relationship to an earthquake, with clever rhymes - "… Baby, our love is on the fault line / And you're sayin' that the fault's mine / … You've been stirrin' up an earthquake / You've been cookin' up a heartbreak…". One part of the lyric even plays off her own name as she sings - "… Now there's a chilly wind a blowin' / and it's whippin' up a gale …" -


The third single released from the “True Love“ album, if the Josh Leo and Wendy Waldman composed ‘Baby, What About You’ ain’t about the cutest song on this entire country music history series, I dunno what is. The great dancing piano intro wraps around Crystal‘s vocals at the song’s start, leading into the harmonic (she also sang the backing) that almost sounds as if it was from the 1960’s, like it could’ve been recorded by Ronnie Spector, not a brand new song in 1983. It was another runaway hit, going all the way to # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada and also peaking at # 9 on the AC charts in the U.S. and Canada -


Now for something very different - and I guess I’m cheating again a bit here, because what follows ain’t really country, but just too good to exclude from the Gayle catalog here. One of the most overlooked gems in country and rock history is the soundtrack album that Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle collaborated on for the 1982 movie “One From The Heart”, a metaphorical retelling of the exploits of Zeus and Hera set in Las Vegas - a bit too obscure for most, ahead of its time in terms of technology, use of colour, montage and set design. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, it’s an epic but largely forgotten movie that at the time got bad reviews and bombed at the box office, but in hindsight and for many serious movie devotees, it’s a beautiful, heartbreaking and brilliant picture. There are many mesmerising songs on the soundtrack album, but I can’t include many here - so I picked two I think stand out.

The first one up is the captivating duet between Tom Waits and Gayle entitled ’Take Me Home’ - written by Waits. One might’ve thought it crazy to try matching this polar opposite pair. Turns out it was a genius move - this is simply such a great listen. Described by All Music critic, Thom Jureck, as “one of the most beautifully wrought soundtrack collaborations in history”, it’s exquisite, with Gayle’s clear, ringing vocals proving the perfect foil to Wait’s smoky baritone. The gravelly Waits, so raw and rough, like someone who’s just stumbled out of a dingy bar, and yet so tender, contrasting with Crystal, the radiant beauty with an angelic voice, who sounds like she’s just gracefully exited Sunday church. The contrast couldn’t be greater, yet it works perfectly - Waits' piano is a canny and intuitive counterpart to the deep sensuality of Gayle's vocal, while the combination of their voices really pulls the heart stings - two voices in glorious contrast … one perfect song -


‘Old Boyfriends‘ is the second song picked from the “One From The Heart,” soundtrack. Gayle’s performance on this wistful, melancholic song is stunning -


‘The Sound Of Goodbye’ written by Hugh Prestwood, was the first single released from the 1984 “Cage the Songbird” album, the title taken from the Elton John Song. This was Gayle’s last Top 10 charted album, at # 5. The single itself was another huge hit, peaking at # 1, her 13th # 1 as a solo artist and also climbed into the Top 10 of the AC chert -


Gayle's last # 1 singles came in 1986 with ’Cry‘ and the smooth Gary Morris duet ’Makin' Up for Lost Time‘, after which she -- rather abruptly - all but disappeared from the charts. Now a mother of 2 young children, a daughter in born 1983 and a son born in 1986, Gayle, at age 35, stepped back from the constant recording and touring schedule as her priorities changed. She served as spokesperson for Tennessee's "Healthy Children Initiative", credited with expanding prenatal care in that state tenfold. In 1988, Gayle took an active role in politics, stumping on the campaign trail for George Bush throughout the South.

Gayle continued to record, albeit at a much slower pace than her chart-topping era, reuniting with Allen Reynolds for the 1990 Capitol album “Ain't Gonna Worry” and cut specialty projects for smaller labels thereafter. She recorded two gospel albums during the 1990’s, “Someday” and “He Is Beautiful”. In 1999, in a move somewhat akin to Linda Ronstadt’s in the 1980’s to cover classic standards of the Great American songbook, Gayle completed a tribute project, “Crystal Gayle Sings the Heart & Soul of Hoagy Carmichael”. In the meantime, she ran a shop in Nashville devoted to fine jewelry and (of course) crystal. Gayle opened the new millennium with 2000's “In My Arms”, an album of children's songs, then in 2003 she brought out “All My Tomorrows”, a collection of Great American Songbook standards (just like Linda Ronstadt had previously done), after which Gayle went on an extended hiatus from recording.

However, just as it appeared Crystal Gayle’s stellar career had completely wound down to a quiet retirement, there came an unexpected revival as her legacy came to be more appreciated - so tomorrow has the postscript to complete her story up to now.
 
Today we wrap up Crystal Gayle’s career to date. She. spent the better part of the 2000’s and 2010’s quietly, essentially retiring from the recording studio after 2003’s “All My Tomorrows”, though she continued to perform with regularity and was awarded a number of honours. In 2008 she was inducted into the Kentucky Music HoF and Museum. In 2009, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2016, she was presented with the "Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award" from the ACM. Gayle commented in 2016, "It's nice to think maybe your music has influenced other artists who are out there."

Chief among these was her induction to the Grand Ole Opry. In 2016, almost 50 years after making her debut as a guest artist, Gayle was asked to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry by Carrie Underwood. The two performed ’Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue‘ before Underwood announced the invitation. Gayle was officially inducted by big sister Loretta Lynn in 2017, 50 years after she first performed at the Opry, filling in for her ill big sister, singing ‘Ribbon Of Darkness’.

This was the start of a return to the spotlight which culminated with the 2019 release of “You Don't Know Me”, an album in which Gayle’s music career really completed it’s full circle as she covered classic country standards. “You Don't Know Me: Classic Country“ was Crystal's first studio album in 16 years, co-produced with her son, record producer Christos Gatzimos. Arguably this is her best album since 1983's “Cage the Songbird”. She is still in strong voice, though her upper register is somewhat diminished. The lead single is the great Gordon Lightfoot written classic, ‘Ribbon Of Darkness”, featuring a great rhythm section and one of Crystal’s strongest vocal performances of her entire career. ‘Ribbon of Darkness‘ was the first song Gayle performed on the Grand Ole Opry in 1967. Marty Robbins had taken the song to #1 in 1965 (and also established Gordon Lightfoot’s stellar song-writing career - see post # 696). In 1969 Connie Smith‘s version (post # 485) reached #16.

On her first TV appearance as a 19 y.o. in 1970, in which she appeared with her 3 siblings, Jay Lee Webb, Peggy Sue and, of course, Loretta Lynn, all charting country singers at the time, Crystal sang ’Ribbon Of Darkness’ in key of D. Her phrasing was still somewhat rustic at that time and she wasn’t quite pitch perfect, but her raw talent was still very obvious -


Here, some 50 years later, she returns to the classic country music she started with, though now, at age 68 in 2019, she sings in the B key, as she does in all the rest of her “You Don't Know Me” album, Gayle brings this classic song home -


All up, Gayle has chalked up 18 # 1 hits with her distinctively agreeable smooth pop-country sound, 2 more than her legendary older sister, the hard-core country traditionalist, Loretta Lynn, had under her belt. HHis ranks her 4th among all country music women in history, behind only Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Reba McEntire. Gayle has been a quiet and unassuming performer. She lives with her husband in a modest home near Nashville. There’s no sensationalist stories about her (except a felon on the run in 2007 who managed to steal her tour bus and traveled to Daytona Speedway, only to be apprehended by police after asking for directions from a prostitute who turned out to be part of a police sting. The bus was returned to Crystal Gayle undamaged. Simply one of the loveliest voices and smoothest styles around - a case where it is truly the music that does the talking.

Anyway, that’s all for Crystal Gayle - I must go now and pack my bags again, as tomorrow I have to fly to Darwin tomorrow then head back to the Kimberley, where I’ll be in mostly remote, uncontactable places for the next 2 weeks. But I’ll be back with more history, still plying through through the 1970’s - that incredibly rich and diverse decade of country music history … eventually.
 
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This is 13 year old Rory Phillips. If you want to see how he has progressed since this song, have a look in the "What Are You Listening To Now?" thread.
 
After having a couple of weeks in some extremely remote, but very warm, parts of the Kimberle, I’m back to the Melbourne cold and resuming the country history series. Our next artist comes from the southern tip of the Mississippi delta and was inspired by his famous older cousin to finally follow a music career. However, he had a long music apprenticeship before finally, at age 38, breaking through to national chart success with a string of traditional but pop-flavoured country hits starting from 1974. Even though his music ain’t my favourite type, there’s no doubt he was an accomplished musician, especially on the piano, a polished performer and entertainer. But his greatest influence came with the release of a Hollywood movie in 1980, spawning a whole new sub-genre of country music and a new urban form of honky tonk culture - that influenced the 1980’s and beyond and ensured his spot in this series

Born Mickey Gilley (yes - his actual birth name) in 1936 in the Mississippi river town Natchez (IMO the South’s most beautiful town, full of antebellum mansions untouched by the ravages of the civil war and loaded with history - much of it dark) but while still very young, his family moved to nearby Ferriday, on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi. There he grew up with first cousins Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart (who later became famous as America‘s most popular TV evangelist until embroiled in a huge sex scandal. All 3 boys were musically inclined, raided on country and gospel, but they also spent their time sneaking off to look through the windows of black juke joints, listening to the haunting sounds of Louisiana blues, boogie-woogie and R&B, and begging their parents to buy them guitars and/or pianos. Despite Mrs. Gilley's low waitress salary, she managed to buy the a piano for Mickey at age 10. Getting taught by his prodigiously talented slightly older (by 6 months) cousin, Jerry Lee, Mickey became quite proficient on it by the time he reached adolescence.

Unlike Jerry Lee, though, Mickey didn’t just count on his musical abilities to provide him with a career. He left home and married at age 16 in 1952 (as you know by now, this was a normal age to marry in the deep South back then) and moved to Houston, finding work in the parts department of an engineering firm. But in 1957, as Jerry Lee Lewis ascended to national stardom (and the wealth that followed), Gilley, who shared Jerry Lee’s music roots and much of his talent, decided to also follow a music career himself and released his first single, ‘Ooh we Baby’ on a local Houston label. Though the rather anaemic rock’n’roll song didn’t sell, it was later by used in a commercial for Yoplait yogurt. Gilley did, however, obtain regular session work as a piano player at several Houston-area recording studios and began performing in local clubs as well.

In 1958, Gilley landed a contract with Dot Records and released the single ’Call Me Shorty‘, a rollicking rockabilly number which enjoyed moderate local success in Houston but was otherwise dismissed as being too similar in style to Jerry Lee's rock’n’roll hits. Despite their shared musical heritage, cousin Jerry Lee had unlocked the door to success first and, though it took a while for Gilley to realise it, there was room for only one killer. In 1959 Mickey had some further minor local success with ‘Is it wrong for loving you?‘, in which an acquaintance and aspiring musician called Kenny Rogers played bass, but it didn’t go beyond Houston

Discouraged by his lack of recording success, Gilley moved his focus from the recording studio to club work, homing is craft and becoming popular enough to land gigs in clubs throughout the South, bouncing to Biloxi, Mississippi, New Orleans, Lake Charles, Louisiana and Mobile, Alabama, before returning to Houston and finding steady employment at The Nesadel Club in suburban Pasadena, a rough and tough blue collar area in east Houston, home of numerous petrochemical refineries. The Nesadel became Gilley’s home for 10 years, a time when Gilley recorded numerous singles for other small labels like his own Astro Records. Using his multi-genre background, now honed by years of his popular live club performances rock’n’roll, Louisiana style R&B, gospel and traditional country, but, to his frustration and mystification, nothing really caught on - he tallied exactly just one chart record during this period, ’Now I Can Live Again‘ and it stalled at a lowly #68 in 1968

In the early 1970s, in a fateful move for the future, Gilley teamed up with longtime friend Sherwood Cryer to open his own club in Pasadena called Gilley's - a whole lot more about this tomorrow. Gilley himself, of course, sang and played piano for the house band, and the club quickly became an Houston area favourite. Meanwhile, Gilley recorded again, this time cutting an album with GRT Records. In order to avoid duplicating the sound of his cousin Jerry Lee, he changed his style and even refused to play the piano at these recording sessions. However, the album, despite Gilley’s now established reputation as about the best club performer in the land, still didn’t gain cut through to the record buying public.

So Gilley went through one of the longest honky tonk apprenticeships ever racked up by an artist before achieving national fame - nearly 20 years of grinding out other people's hits in a succession of honky tonks, years of having his own records (on a succession of small labels) consistently flop while he watched other, lesser talents score big on their very first time out of the chute. It got to the stage where Gilley had accepted that despite all his popularity as a live club performer, and the runaway success of his own club, Gilley‘s, which made him well known and wealthy, recording success will forever elude him - “I didn’t have any success whatsoever, as far as national attention. As far as my recording career was concerned, I didn’t think it was ever going to happen”.

Ironically, after the years of trying, the “overnight success” segment of the Gilley’s recording career started by complete accident - and was very nearly self-sabotaged by Gilley himself. A Gilley's club employee requested he record one of her favourite songs, ’She Calls Me Baby‘ just so she could play it on the club's jukebox. He agreed and also recorded a remake of an old favourite of his own, the 1949 George Morgan hit, ’Room Full of Roses‘, for the B side. However, he felt it’s recording was terrible - “All I could hear was that damn steel guitar. The echo was just bouncing off the walls”. For him, the annoyance of the steel guitar, which he considered was mixed in too loudly, and piano play took away from a quality song - he even got out of synch during the piano interlude and in the song’s middle portion. This and the echo in the song gave him reason to believe it was a failed recording that shouldn’t be released. He was only persuaded otherwise by the facts it was only the B-side on a local Houston release and the whole record was only recorded so the A-side can be added to his clubs jukebox selection! Little did Gilley realise, after so many years of recording flops, that this “dud” recording would become his first charted hit single - and not only that, it smashed it all the way to the national # 1 spot in 1974.

The B-side ‘Room Full of Roses’ first became a huge hit in the Houston area and with his hope thus renewed, Gilley traveled to Nashville to see if he could land a major record deal. The major labels, wary of all his many years of recording flops, still rejected him, but he won a contract with (of all unlikely labels) Playboy Records, which released the single nationwide - the rest is history. For Gilley, the awkward “dud” recording now didn’t seem so bad, becoming his big breakthrough and signature song. It not only topped the US chart, but went to # 6 in Canada and even made the Top 10 pop chart in Australia.

As for the song itself, which had a strong 1950’s retro feel about it, many, reading the title or not properly listening, mistook it (and many still do) for a simple romantic love ballad, but the lyrics make it clear this is a traditional honky tonk weeper about a man whose woman has done him wrong -
“… And if I took the petals / I would tear them all apart / I'd be tearing at the roses / Just the way you broke my heart …” -


After his first # 1 hit, Gilley‘s label urged him to look for something in the same manner as ‘Room Full Of Roses’ as a follow-up. Gilley made the perfect choice, a thematic follow on from his ‘Room Full Of Roses’ breakthrough, ‘I Overlooked An Orchid’ was a minor hit for Carl Smith in 1950 that Gilley remembered singing as a teenager. Gilley’s label had to dig up the sheet music because he could no longer remember all the lyrics. It ended up being another # 1 hit, spending 14 weeks on the chart -


After nearly 2 long frustrating decades trying and failing to find an ever elusive hit, suddenly in 1974 Gilley found himself unable to record anything other than hits! Originally, ‘City Lights‘ was a 1957 Bill Anderson song that didn’t get much attention. Then the great vocalist, Ray Price recorded it in 1958 and took it all the way to # 1. In 1975, Gilley did the same with his own cover version, topping the charts again and it also became a # 2 in Canada. The awestruck-style of the narrator taking in the big “city lights”, only to find what lay below the lights was another matter, saw Gilley put an urbanised country spin on this honky tonk favourite -
“… The cabarets and honky tonks / Their flashing signs invite / The broken heart can lose itself / In the glow of city lights /
Lights that say forget her now / In a glass of sherry wine / Lights that offer other girls / For empty hearts like mine /
They paint a pretty picture / Of a world that's gay and bright / And it's just a mask for loneliness / Behind those city lights …” -


For George Jones, the 1960 ‘Window Up Above’, which he composed in 20 minutes, became that one song in his career, his signature song, that threw Jones into a new realm of success he hadn’t realised before. As for Gilley, his 1975 coverage of the song was equally stellar. For him, it became his 4th consecutive # 1, peaking at # 1 in both the US and Canada in 1975 -


’Don’t The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time’ shows up Gilley’s long experience as a honky tonk night club performer. Powered by his energising piano accompaniment, this now totally politically incorrect song (though it contains much real life truth) became his 5th # 1 in 1976 in the US and also topped the chart in Canada. In the honky tonk, bar-like style Gilley is best known for, his desperate performance as a man at a bar looking for love saw about him lamenting his late-night eagerness to meet an attractive woman in a barroom. As the evening grew and the more drinks he consumed, he started to lower down his standard until he finally found the one who’s willing to come home with him. But when the morning came, he woke up (presumably with one helluva hangover) to regret his choice. He vowed to never “do it anymore”. The lesson here - when at a honky tonk or bar, win over the person of your choice early. Very wise advice that -

’Don’t The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time’ won Gilley the Song of the Year at the 1976 ACM Awards. These day, it wouldn’t be recorded.

Mickey Gilley’s sudden arrival, at age 38, as a chart-topping performer in 1974 coincided with the “outbreak” of the outlaw era, led by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Gilley wasn’t universally favoured by the country music purists as he integrated more pop sounds into country, but his sound and image provided a counterpoint to the often rough and ready outlaw image, while his sound was less overwrought than the rapidly dating Nashville or Countrypolitan Sound. Meanwhile, his overwhelming chart success from 1974 onwards also enabled his Pasadena club, Gilley’s, to massively expand, making it the biggest, and hottest, night spot in Texas and beyond. But his real influence on country music (for better or for worse) still lay ahead, as we shall see tomorrow.
 
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Today continues Mickey Gilley‘s career from 1976, now at age 40, having already had 5 # 1 hits since his overdue chart breakthrough in 1974, most delivering covers of traditional honky Tonk songs with his piano flourishes and some some pop or Countrypolitan touches to add to their commercial appeal. He was known for putting his own spin on old hits from the era. In 1976, Gilley’s version of Sam Cooke's 1962 classic soulful gospel influenced hit ‘Bring It All Home To Me’, delivered yet another # 1, his 6th in just 2 years, in 1976. The song had already become a soul/pop standard, covered by numerous artists of different genres, including The Animals, Otis Redding, Rod Stewart and John Lennon. Gilley’s piano driven rendition adds a country flavour with its simple yet catchy guitar riffs, albeit with some overdone Countrypolitan style accruements, his smooth vocals still capturing the sorrowful sentiment of Sam Coke’s original -


‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, composed by Lloyd Prince, was among the biggest selling R&B records of 1952, becoming a staple of Louisiana music. It influenced so many songs that, for a period, every new R&B song released in New Orleans sounded suspiciously similar to it - including Little Richard’s all-time early rock’n’roll classic, ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’. So here, Gilley shows his early Louisianan musical heritage as he no doubt heard this song performed many times in those small town juke joints he and his cousins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart, sneaked off from their parents to watch through the windows in their late childhood. Such was Gilley’s popularity by 1976 that he even took this cover of the old Louisianan R&B standard to an unlikely # 3 -


‘True Love Ways‘ was co-written by Norman Petty and Buddy Holly in 1958 as a wedding gift to Holly’s bride, Maria Santiago. Petty’s wife recorded the first version of the song 2 weeks before Holly got engaged with Santiago. Holly recorded it on his final recording session before he boarded the fateful flight that crashed and tragically claimed his life, along with Richie Valens and The Big Bopper, in February 1959. Since then, several artists have covered the song, most notably British pop duo, Peter And Gordon, in 1965. Two decades after the tease of Holly‘s version, Gilley became the first artist to take the beau ballad all the way to the top of the chart -

A friend once said, on hearing Holly’s version of ‘True Love Ways’ for the first time - “A girl could get pregnant just listening to that”.

As mentioned at the end of yesterday’s edition, as Gilley's star rose, his Gilley's club became increasingly popular, growing into the largest country music bar (and possibly the largest of any bar) in the world. The huge Houston suburban honky tonk drew crowds of people all through the week soon after the opening. It opened its doors 7 days a week, from 10 AM to late, living up to its motto, “We Doze but We Never Close”. Every night it filled its 6,000-person capacity. People enjoyed its showers for truckers, a shooting gallery, pool tables, and punching bags. Of course, it had its legendary rodeo arena with mechanical bulls (the first to do so) and a dance floor big enough for thousands.

With that, Gilley’s attracted most of the top country music acts of the 1970’s - honky tonk, countrypolitan, outlaw, whatever, it didn’t matter. Pretty much anyone who was a big country music star in the 1970’s (and many veteran performers from the 1950’s and 1960’s) made an appearance at one time or another - though Mickey was the one permanent house performer. Most of the performances were recorded live and archived. The nightly shows were then broadcasted weekly on the radio from 1977 to 1989, and was called “Live from Gilley’s.” It was carried nationally by more than 500 stations, rivalling the Grand Ole Opry. The show was even broadcasted around the globe, thanks to Armed Forces Radio.

Gilley’s became a home away from home for most of the residents in the area. These were mostly blue-collar people working in nearby oil refineries and at other such gritty working class jobs - very few were rural folk. They headed to the club after work in their droves to dance, drink, sometimes fight and to try find love - either for the night or for longer - somewhere across the vast expanse of the club’s concrete floor. By 1978 it had become a Texan institution and in 1978, journalist Aaron Latham wrote a piece about the scene at Gilley's for the elitist Esquire Magazine, titled "The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America's Search for True Grit”. Eventually, the reputation of Gilley’s as an enormous rough and tumble honky tonk got Hollywood’s attention. In 1979, a highly-budgeted movie production rolled into Pasadena. Filmmaker James Bridges adapted the story into a movie, and 1980's Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta and Debra Winger and shot largely at Gilley's, became a major box office hit, as did its soundtrack album, which featured Gilley singing ’Stand by Me’.

It was little wonder that Travolta had an interest in the part; his massive 1977 hit Saturday Night Fever was also based on a magazine piece. Also like Fever, and Travolta’s 1978 hit, Grease, the part would allow him to show his dancing ability against the backdrop of a strong soundtrack (Travolta’s representation had previously suggested he take a cut of the soundtracks for Fever and Grease, a move that paid off to the tune of millions). While the film wasn’t as huge as Fever or Grease, it was a sizeable hit in terms of not just box office, but also fashion and music - even many downtown Manhattan office workers who hadn’t seen a cow or touched a horse in their life found it cool donNing cowboy boots and Stetson hats to go line-dancing at nights! Soon a recording studio was built in front of Gilley’s, and concerts, 4th of July picnics and rodeos were staged in a tin-roofed arena Cryer erected out back. Guided tours were added during the daytime, to further accommodate the tourists who flocked to the honky-tonk in the wake of the movie.

The soundtrack for Urban Cowboy leaned heavily on pop-flavored country and generated 5 Top 10 country singles - ‘Love the World Away‘ by Kenny Rogers; ‘Look What You’ve Done to Me‘ by Boz Scaggs; Gilley’s ‘Stand by Me”; ‘Lookin’ for Love’ by Johnny Lee and ‘Could I Have This Dance?‘ by Anne Murray. The latter 3 all went to #1, and all 5 crossed over to the Pop Chart. Those songs, along with other hits like Dolly Parton’s title tune from her own 1980 film, 9 to 5, caused a major surge in the popularity of the lighter pop side of country - the polar opposite of the 1970’s Outlaw era.

Ben King’s all-time 1961 classic, ‘Stand by Me‘ rightfully earned its place in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for its culturally, historically, and aesthetically significance. The inspiration of this song came from the gospel hymn of the same title from the Biblical Book of Psalms. It has since been recorded more than 400 times and performed by many notable artists. For Gilley, his 1980 urbanised country version featured on Urban Cowboy and became another # 1 hit and also marked the peak of his crossover success, peaking at # 22 on the pop charts. Here I present 2 versions for your choice - one is the pristine studio recording, but the second shows it’s use in a key scene in the movie, though the dialogue and action partly distracts from the music -

The movie clip -


Written by Jerry Foster and Bill Rice, and first released in 1978 as the second single from his “Flyin' High”, ‘Here Comes The Hurt Again’ # 9 - a sign Gilley’s commercial appeal was starting to wane, until 1980 saw him back on top of the charts. A re-recorded version of this song appears on the soundtrack to Urban Cowboy, which sold over 3 million -


Hard-country aficionados turned up their noses, but the success of Urban Cowboy encouraged urbanites to dip their new Tony Lama boots into country music. In virtually no time, line dancing videos became the rage, and country bars became newly minted hangouts in big northern cities that previously ignored country music. It also led to a change in Mickey Gilley’s music. Cannily riding the current pop-flavoured Urban Cowboy wave, he largely abandoned his honky tonk and old rock and soul covers in favour of the new soft pop-flavoured country - and it paid off, at least for a while until tastes and fashion inevitably moved on. Tomorrow will see out the remainder of Mickey Gilley’s career.
 
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When Urban Cowboy came out in 1980, Mickey Gilley found a whole new level of appreciation, with 8 of the next 9 singles going all the way #1, making him, for one of the most popular artists in the USA in the early 1980’s. Not only that, after his key role in Urban Cowboy, he also, forged a successful acting career, starring in popular TV series of the time including Murder She Wrote, The Fall Guy, Fantasy Island and Dukes of Hazzard.

And though some of the country old-timers criticised Gilley for his bringing in pop production values to honky tonk, none of his big hits ever crossed over to the upper parts of the pop chart. However, the cultural influence of Urban Cowboy went beyond Gilley - in 1981, for the first (and only) time ever, country music was the top-selling genre of music in the USA, outselling rock and pop. However, continuing the long fued that started in the late 1950’s when Chet Atkins introduced the Nashville Sound (posts # 354 & 404), many country traditionalists regarded the pop-influenced Urban Cowboy country sound as more pop than country. This battle between the hard core country and pop fans has continued down to this day, when even rap/hip hop has been marketed and passed off as country.

Anyway, let’s see the last phase of Mickey Gilley’s music and career, starting with his first single released after the Urban Cowboy movie and soundtrack in 1980. ‘That’s All That Matters’, written by Hank Cochran, was first recorded by Ray Price in 1964. Many other artists have covered it, but Mickey Gilley’s version, released as the first single and title tune from his 1980 album, “That’s All That Matters to Me”, is by far the most well-known, becoming his 3rd # 1 in 1980 alone and his 10th song overall to top the charts -


Penned by Chick Rains, ’A Headache Tomorrow (Or A Heartache Tonight) was released in 1981, the second single from the 1980 “That’s All That Matters to Me” album, and once again for Gilley, now about the most popular entertainer in the country, it shot up to # 1 in both the US and Canada. Nothing like a classic honky tonk theme of which is worse between a headache by drinking one’s sorrows away or the heartache of obsessive memories of a lost love. The honky tonk tradition is, of course, for oblivion -
“… Well, if the whiskey doesn't get me, I know the memories will / 'Cause you left a hole in my heart, that's too deep to fill /
But a drink or two, maybe three or four, for a while you're out of sight / It's a headache tomorrow or a heartache tonight …” -


‘You Don’t Know Me’ was first released by the great country vocalist, Eddy Arnold (posts # 189-191) in 1956 but it was Ray Charles who made it a classic standard in 1962 (post # 443). Other greats such as Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson (post # 788) have covered it, but Gilley’s version was the most successful, once again topping both the US and Canadian charts and also reached # 12 on the AC chart. The inspiration behind the song came from a song title suggestion made by Eddy Arnold to Cindy Walker, a songwriter of many classic and timeless tunes. In banter between the two, Eddy quipped “You don’t know me”, which inspired Walker to build a song around the remark, admitting the song itself developed a life of its own as she wrote it. It’s now one of the classics of country music, a beautiful but sad song of thwarted, unrequited love, all due to a choking shyness -
“… No you don't know the one / Who dreams of you at night / And longs to kiss your lips / Longs to hold you tight /
Oh I am just a friend / That's all I've ever been / 'Cause you don't know me …”


From the 1981 album, “You Don’t Know Me”. ‘Lonely Nights’ became yet another Gilley hit to top the charts in both the US and Canada and was Gilley’s 13th # 1 hit, still shining bright in the afterglow of the Urban Cowboy success and influence. This ballad was beautifully performed by an artist that knows how to tug at the heart strings just as much as his toe-tapping classics. Lonely nights‘ have been known to be harder to take than lonely days. -


‘You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me‘, the title track of Gilley’s 1964 album, was written by Smokey Robinson - the leader of r&b/soul group The Miracles, the first Motown Group – while thinking about Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home To Me’. This is another souls song covered by loads of other artists, including The Beatles in 1963. Cooke’s song tells the tale of a man who loses the woman he loves. Though he didn’t think much of it in the beginning, he soon started missing her terribly, apologising to her and promising her he would treat her right as long as she comes back. ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me‘ got a similar sentiment - however, the roles are now reversed. The woman mistreated the man, but he can’t help but love her unconditionally -


Like all artists do sooner or later, Mickey fell out of favour with radio programmers, scoring his last Top-10 at age 52 in 1986, as the empire came crashing down in the late 1980’s as neotraditionalists led by George Strait and including Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, The Judds and Reba McEntire took over. By 1988 he was no longer with Epic but on tiny Airborne Records, where he posted 4 more minor chart records. But his fading career with radio wasn't the most serious problem he was facing. In 1989 Gilley successfully sued his business partner for $17 million in misappropriated funds, little of which he ever collected after his court victory. By then Billy Bob's Texas, up in Fort Worth (a far more interesting place to visit than it’s twin city Dallas), had built an even bigger honky tonk (still going strongly to this day and also now a traditional venue for live album recordings) and, with the western craze and urban cowboys passe, Hollywood looked elsewhere for movies. Sometime in the early 1990s a mysterious fire swept the club, marking the end of a colourful and tumultuous era.

Gilley wasn’t quite finished - turned his career around in the early 1990s, when he became the first country star to open a permanent theatre in the Ozark Mountain town Branson, Missouri, making it a major destination for country music performers and fans alike. Then in 1993 the unthinkable happened, an electrical short in a neon sign created a spark and the theatre burned to the ground. The 6 people were in the building all escaped unharmed. Gilley rebuilt and his veteran stage career was blooming.

Although Gilley recorded some albums in the 1990’s - which were primarily available through TV ads - he focused his career on the 950 seat theatre, where he played 6 shows a week for 9 months of the year. He owned 2 cafes called Gilley’s Texas Café - one in Branson, the other in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. But 2009 brought another setback … Gilley tripped while helping his friends move a sofa and was paralysed for 3 months with severe spinal injuries. He could no longer play the piano, walking was difficult, requiring assistance but his voice was still good and he eventually returned to performing at his Branson theatre.

Gilley recorded and released 28 studio albums and 11 compilation albums. Out of the 52 singles he released, 17 went all the way to # 1. In 1974, he won Top New Male Vocalist by the ACM Awards, Top Male Vocalist, Album of the Year for “Gilley’s Smoking”, and Entertainer of the Year. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, thanks to his contribution to the recording and movie industry. in 2002, he and his cousins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart, were inducted into the Delta Music HoF in their home town of Ferriday, Louisiana. ultimately led it to Old Kinderhoork Resort, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, in 2014. In 2020, a road in Pasadena, Texas, was renamed in his honour as Mickey Gilley Boulevard.

Mickey Gilley died in 2022 in Branson, Missouri at age 86 (post # 693 recorded his death here) survived by his third wife, 6 children from his 3 marriages, 4 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren. The spirit of Gilley’s still lives on with today’s “world biggest honky tonk” Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, a Texas institution inspired by the original Gilley’s and opened after Urban Cowboy made it a phenomeno. Today there is a rival honky tonk nearly as big as Billy Bob’s in Dallas, fittingly named Gilley’s Dallas and there are 2 others, in Las Vegas and Durant Oklahoma. Then there is Gilley's store in Pasadena, not far from the original location of his original world famous honky tonk, which sells all sorts of Mickey Gilley souvenirs and paraphernali.

Now I’ve been called away for at least a week, maybe 2 from Monday, so there’ll be another break from this history until I return with an artist I’ve paired with Mickey Gilley as his still unfinished career has had some parallels as well as differences with him.
 
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Willie Nelson releasing a bluegrass album this year. Recently collabed in a Billy Strings song so I’m assuming Billy is heavily involed( from the small snippet it sounded like Billy on the guitar) in this. Looking forward to it as it’s gonna be some of his biggest hits turned into Bluegrass
 
I’m back in town again just along enough for the next artist to make this series. This one had a few similarities with Mickey Gilley - he wasn’t an overnight success (though success came far quicker than the 20 years of trying it took Gilley), he mostly avoided Nashville apart from recording purposes, he built up a highly successful and lucrative business empire based on his music career. Also, like Gilley’s “Urban Cowboy”, he created a whole new country music sub-genre, dubbing it “Gulf & Western” - and in the process, expanding the horizons of country music, adding the tropical seas of the Gulf and the Caribbean with its myriad of islands, their calypso rhythms and steel drums to the country music universe. Unlike Gilley, today’s artist was also a wordsmith, an avid songwriter who found as much success in the pop/rock charts as the country charts - but by today’s standards, his music comfortably falls within the country music stable.

Born James Buffett on Christmas Day 1946 in the Deep South gulf port city of Pascagoula, Mississippi but raised in the neighbouring bigger industrial port city of Mobile, Alabama (now a centre of Southern culture and music and a great place to visit). Early on, young Jimmy (as he was called) was enchanted with his nautical roots - his father was a naval architect and the son of a sailor, who often took Buffett on sailing trips. His father, who had traveled to India and Africa with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before settling in Mobile, wanted young Jimmy to follow in his footsteps and become a naval officer, but Buffett forged a different path, enrolling at Auburn University to study journalism.

When Jimmy noticed how a fraternity friend in college with a guitar garnered the attention of the girls, he quickly learned a few basic chords and started playing himself. Suddenly Jimmy's world opened up - while he still attended classes, he quickly formed his first band, playing in pizza joints and bars then left his college studies to venture to the party town of New Orleans, going from busking on the street corner in the Latin quarter, playing all night for tips for anyone who'd listen, progressing to playing 6 nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs, performing folk songs and beginning to write his own material. He got into Eskatrol, an amphetamine prescribed for weight loss and had a high-priced call girl girlfriend. But eventually, he went back to college at the University of Southern Mississippi and, at age 22, obtained his bachelor of journalism degree in 1969.

After graduating, Buffett headed back to Mobile, after proposing to his new girlfriend, pert beauty queen, Miss U.S.S, Alabama and the couple made the move together. But finding Mobile didn’t offer much, he moved to Nashville in 1969, with dreams of kickstarting his musical career. Making use of his journalism degree, he landed a day job at Billboard magazine, suddenly finding himself thrust into the middle of the Nashville music industry scene, albeit as a journalist, not a performer. As he later recalled in his book, A Pirate Looks at Fifty - "I had gone from just another nobody songwriter who couldn't get his foot into a music publisher's door into assistant Southern editor of Billboard. Hell, people took me to lunch, I had business cards. I flew to New York for editorial meetings".

Working as the Nashville correspondent for Billboard, the self-described only “real job“ he ever had, Buffett made some useful contacts in the music industry and continued to perform in clubs around Nashville. This quickly led to his 1970 debut album on the Barnaby label. However, the poorly produced country-folk release ”Down To Earth” was a total dud, with just 324 sold (ironically, it’s now a strongly sought after collectors item) and his second album never even hit the shelves when the label mysteriously misplaced the master tape.

Despite the abject failure of his debut album, it contained one song that has endured - a deeply personal and poignant true life story song Buffett wrote in honour of his grandfather, who took him sailing when he was a kid and instilled his love of the sea. Captain James Buffett, a former sailor who could never quite adjust to life on land, died in January 1970 at age 82. When Buffett came home to Nashville after the wake, he poured his grief into song. Buffett, showing his lyrical talent, looked back on his childhood and the inspiration he’d found in his grandfather’s tales of a life on the open sea when he was younger. Buffett, displaying his blossoming song-writing skills, bundles up all his hopes and dreams and fears into a fitting tribute to the man who inspired him and how hard it had been to see that adventurous seafaring man have to settle for a life on dry land as he got older -
“… His world had gone from sailing ships / to raking mom’s back yard /
He never could adjust to land / although he tried so hard …” -

The Nashville record producer showed interest in the song as a potential single but considered it too sad. He wanted Buffett to change the ending and let the old man live, but Buffett refused. After all, his grandfather, the subject and inspiration for the song, had died. The experience soured the singer's opinion of Nashville and the following year he moved to Key West. In 1976, Buffett re-recorded ‘The Captain And The Kid’ for his 1976 album "Havana Daydreamin'", thus rescuing it from from complete obscurity to become an essential part of Buffett’s music catalog.

In 1971, Buffett left both Nashville and a failed marriage, headed to L.A. for a while before, at the behest of Jerry Lee Walker (see posts # 844-847), ending up in Key West, Florida, at the very end of the island chain off the southern tip of Florida, just 170 km’s from the nearest city - Havana, Cuba, described as "then a lazy outpost for shrimpers, smugglers, gays and cosmic cowboys like singer Jerry Jeff Walker …”, the last outpost of smugglers, con-men, artists and free-spirits who simply couldn't run any further south in the mainland USA. Living on a ketch and tooling around the area' islands, he fitted right in with the laid back tropical lifestyle of the island town where drugs, booze, and easy sex were plentiful in the early 1970’s. Buffett found his niche, penning colourful tunes about life in the Keys that blended folk, country and rock elements, playing in bars while hoping to snag another recording deal. He wrote songs in his yacht, in hammocks and in bars, especially the Chart Room bar, where he performed for drinks and tips while becoming a member in good standing of the notorious Club Mandible, a roaming social club dedicated to partying with copious inebriation and frequent fornication.

Mango daiquiris were the daytime drink, a little psychedelic LSD-laced punch at home in the evening, and for a bigger buzz, there was always speed and plenty of cocaine. Buffett fell in easily with the crowd because he was entertaining and always easygoing. Had he left Nashville for the usual alternatives of New York or L.A., he'd most likely have been just another folk singer working the bars, but in Key West he stood out while also giving Buffett a canvas no other songwriter and a hammock from which to work. A place in the shade to think. It was those early hazy, crazy days in Key West that eventually led to Buffett becoming a tropical icon. But seductive as the tropical life was, Buffett continued to hit the road and perform his own songs, hitchhiking up to Atlanta to play, on to Chicago, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mississippi. He worked colleges across the South and Texas and then went back to Nashville – a place he hated but needed.

Back in Music City, Don Light, an old contact from Buffett’s Billboard days, managed him and worked hard to get him a record deal but all he got was a string of rejections, so Light sent Buffett to a booking showcase, an event where colleges and coffeehouses meet the talent and make offers. It worked and jobs started coming in for Buffett to open shows for headliners. He even slicked back his hair and did an Elvis impersonation that brought down the house. His big break came in late 1972 when he got his 2nd record contract with ABC Dunhill. But they had to find a niche for him and his kind of music because his first record hadn't sold, so they sent a film crew down to Key West to make an introductory short - Introducing Jimmy Buffett. In it, offered his thoughts on island life and how dope-smuggling in the U.S. was happening and not secretly, saying - 'I was tempted occasionally to get into it because … they actually unloaded in the middle of the day, down at the shrimp docks. I was told he could make twice what he'd made for the record with a single run”. This earned Buffett a visit from some Federal narcotics agents but he was able to convince them he was never an actual dope smuggler.

In 1973 Dunhill released Buffett’s second album, “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean”, in which Buffett, an avid reader and admirer of Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, first developed his often humorous, drunken-sailor persona, cultivating his image as an easy-going purveyor of island tunes. Despite the groan-inducing word play of the album title, a piss-take on the great Marty Robbins hit of the 1950’s prom, ‘A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation’ (see post # 328), it enjoyed a bit of success, reaching # 43. From the album, Buffett’s semi-autobiographical account of the ‘The Great Filling Station Holdup’, written about an escapade from his broke, hitchhiking days of the late 1960’s, became his first single to chart, albeit at a very modest # 58. It’s still honky tonk worthy 50 years later -


The songwriting debut by one Marvin Gardens, an (original American version) Monopoly-inspired pseudonym for Buffett, is tongue-in-cheek parody country. With a distinct dislike of Nashville (despite basing himself there at the time) and (like the Outlaws at the time), annoyed with the simplistic, raunchy country hits coming out of the music city at the time, he wrote this infamous tune, the B-side of ‘The Great Filling Station Holdup’, which, despite being banned from radio and TV back then, has since, over the years, gone on to greater popularity. The satirical tune not only pokes fun at the country music establishment, but highlights his frustration as an innovative singer-songwriter -


Showing his serious side and not just a writer of light-hearted, humorous tunes, Buffett was inspired to write ‘He Went To Paris’ after meeting musician Eddie Balchowsky, a one-armed veteran of the Spanish Civil War who he met while playing in Chicago. Another from the 1973 ”A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean” album, Buffett has often said it’s one of his favourite compositions when he plays it live. Bob Dylan also singled this song out for praise -


In Buffett’s fourth album, 1974’s “Living and Dying in ¾ Time“, he exhibits an ambivalent attitude toward his career and the music business in general. Tiptoeing the line between country and pop, the anti-establishment Buffett saw himself foremost as a storyteller/musician. His music at this time accurately depicts his feelings, not hiding how much he disliked Nashville, notably in such songs as ’Brand New Country Star’ and ’Saxophones‘. In the former, he castigates a Nashville product equally capable of going country or pop (though he himself was ”guilty” of this), while in the latter, he complains he can't get radio play, even in his hometown of Mobile. Buffett was determined to make it only on his own terms, and those terms were more those of Texas singer/songwriters like his Key West friend, Jerry Jeff Walker and Willis Alan Ramsey (whose ’Ballad of Spider John‘ he covers on the album) or Gulf Coast blues artists like those he praises in ’Saxophones‘, than any of the popular contemporary country artists.

From the album, in ‘Come Monday’, Buffett sings what amounts to a love letter to his future wife, Jane, who he was missing while on tour. The first line - "Headed out to San Francisco for the Labor Day weekend show …” – was about an actual concert in 1973. Jane even ended up starring in the low-budget video made for the song (so at least they got to spend some time together). The title offers an ironic take to those outside of the music industry, who tend to dread Monday as it means the weekends over and it’s back to work again. For Buffett though, Monday is the quiet music industry day he looks forward to because he could spend time with his family he missed so much while on the road. The song and the homemade music video offer a rare, early look into Buffett before his rise to fame. The yearning, introspective tune was Buffett’s highest charting track - but whereas it only got to another modest # 58 on the country chart, it appealed more to the pop market, no doubt helped by the home made video, reaching # 30 and went right up to # 3 on the AC chart. Though the song is from the pre-Parrothead era, it remains to be one of his most enduring hits -


So, we leave Jimmy Buffett off in 1974, his Key West influenced music, making use of his literary skills and his natural humour in light hearted or satirical works, but also featuring serious, personal or insightful themes and lyrics in others, finally making some real commercial headway, across the country and/or pop charts - his music was hard to categorise too precisely. Tomorrow (or the day after) we will see him really breakthrough as he developed his own distinctive sound.
 
catscratchfever said:
Hank Williams is awesome.

The Louvin Brothers' vocal harmonies are just beautiful. The Carter family - legends.

Country music is cool as long as it's the real stuff, i.e. not Keith Urban or his ilk.

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For Hank Williams potted history and music, see posts # 205-214 - where I named him as country music’s greatest (by far) singer-songwriter, and the most influential country artist ever. Even 70 years after his death at age 29.

For the Louvin Brothers, see posts # 294-295. They had immense influence on The Browns (# 368-369), The Everly Brothers
(# 393-399) and The Judds (# 684) and also influenced Gram Parson (# 560-570) and his protege, Emmylou Harris (# 860). Ironically, the Louvin Brothers, just like the Everly Brothers, for all their incredibly tight harmony, hated each other off-stage -
and sometimes even fought on-stage.

For the foundational Carter Family, see posts # 117-119 and also # 222 for “Mother” Maybelle & The Carter Sisters.

And, yes, like other music genres, country music has its good and not so good - and not so country. I’ve no doubt Keith Urban is an immensely talented musician who can sure shred a guitar - but his pop sound sure ain’t to my taste at all.
 
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We start today’s Jimmy Buffett instalment back in 1974 with one more from his “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” album that has lived on as a favourite, still frequently performed in his live concerts. At the ripe age of 28 Buffett was in a nostalgic but jaunty mood in ‘Pencil Thin Moustache’. The western swing style song is a nostalgic look by Buffett at the popular culture of his 1950’s childhood. The title refers to the Errol Flynn type of moustache popular in the movies of the 1950’s like the film character, Boston Blackie. Buffett name checks a number of persons, characters, and products of the period, including Ricky Ricardo, Andy Devine, Sky King's niece Penny, American Bandstand TV show, Disneyland, Ramar of the Jungle, Bwana, Errol Flynn, the Sheik of Araby, and Brylcreem. The lyrics also move on to growing into a teenager in the 1950s, when "… only jazz musicians were smokin' marijuana" (though in fact 1950’s jazz greats like Charlie “The Bird” Parker and Miles Davis and a host of others were heroin addicts). The playful lyrics then move on to other important matters about growing up -
“… Then it's flat top, dirty bob, coppin' a feel / Grubbin' on the livin' room floor (so sore) /
Yeah, they send you off to college, try to gain a little knowledge, / But all you want to do is learn how to score …” -


Buffett’s 5th studio album, “A1A“ was the 3rd album in his Don Gant produced Key West phase, released in late 1974. The album is named for Florida Highway A1A that runs down along the Atlantic coastline, the main road through most oceanfront towns, and then joins to the Overseas Highway, the super-scenic highway with 42 bridges which connect the Florida Keys island chain to the Florida mainland - the only way to reach Key West via land. Now regarded as one of Buffett’s best albums, it didn’t trouble the country chart but climbed to # 25 in the U.S and Canadian pop charts in 1975. The second Australian released album reached # 43 on the pop chart after “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” had reached # 46 here.

“A1A“ is a look at Jimmy Buffett the man in transition, learning who he is, knowing where he's been, where he's going and taking stock of his situation. While many of the songs for which he is famous involve a life of leisure told with a keen sense of humour, Buffett is more thoughtful than your average beachcomber. In fact, the best moments on this album are the slower tunes such as ’A Pirate Looks at Forty’ where a reflective Buffett looks back at his lifelong love of the ocean and his place in the universe. Yet another ode to the sea in his catalogue, but this one takes the perspective of an aging sailor who is beginning to slow down. These sentimental mariner songs are where Buffett truly shines, at least where his lyrics are concerned.

Like all the best party goers, Buffett is probably at his most lucid when the party’s over and he’s hungover and fragile and worrying about the world. He was only 27 when this song was released, but it's still filled with all the anxieties that come with getting old. He wrote it about Phil Clark, a modern-day pirate he met when he first moved to Key West. In the song he’s a smuggler, a mercenary, a drug runner and an adventurer, worrying about his place in the world and whether being a pirate would even be suitable vocation for a middle-aged man. A gentle rumination for, and about, a real-life dope-smuggler (he knew a few), Buffett ably conveys a blend of world-weary resignation and still-simmering desire -
“… I've done a bit of smugglin', and I've run my share of grass /
I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast /
Never meant to last, never meant to last …”


The second track on the “A1A“ album, ’Migration’ chronicles Buffett’s failed first marriage and his subsequent move to Key West, Florida. He declares "… I got a Caribbean soul I can barely control and some Texas hidden here in my heart …". This perfectly describes his music, incorporating steel drums, harmonica, and slide guitar to tell stories about life by the sea - though in this case also making caustic remarks about the retirees moving down to Florida -
“… Most of the people who retire in Florida / Are wrinkled and they lean on a crutch /
And mobile homes are smotherin' my Keys / I hate those bastards so much /
I wish a summer squall would blow them all / The way up to fantasy land /
Yeah they're ugly and square, they don't belong here / They looked a lot better as beer cans …” -

It can be argued this song hasn’t aged quite so well with the lyrics - “… Most of the people who retire in Florida / Are wrinkled and they lean on a crutch …” - now, ironically, a much older (and wealthier) Buffett has his own branded retirement village in Florida, full of wrinkled retirees.

The last track on the “A1A” album, ‘Tin Cup Chalice’ combines Buffet’s knack for sentimentality with his love for the laid back island life, with this being another sentimental song that longs for going back to the islands and enjoy the boats, the breeze, the bars and the beer - with oysters. The vibe on this one is peaceful and easy with a slow tempo that tempts one to leave now and check out one of these tropical islands Buffett sings of -
“I want to go back, to the islands / Where the shrimp boats are tied up to the piling / Give me oysters and beer /
For dinner every day of the year / And I'll feel fine, I'll feel fine …” -


For Buffett, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean were the doorways to a world of adventure where the characters he heard about in his grandfather's stories were there, just waiting to be discovered - and he discovered more than a few himself. He didn’t just sing of this life - he actually lived it, literally living on a yacht. Buffett’s big commercial breakthrough came in 1977 with the platinum ”Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” album, which got to # 12 on the pop chart, taking himself from cult party-song favourite to a cultural icon and stadium-filling touring artist whose albums sold in their millions.

Towards the end of 1976, his last few albums had all been critically well-received but none of them had sold spectacularly. With the very favourable renegotiated advance that came in from his label, Buffett came good on the mythical promise he’d always made to himself and bought a boat. The bigger recording budget also meant a bigger producer and they brought in Norbert Putnam, who decided they should record away from Nashville in Criteria Studios in Miami and make use of “Trinidad steel drums, wooden flutes and anything else that was nautical”. Buffett was hesitant at first, but a few days later called back saying he was fully on board with the idea, and he’d even written a new song inspired by the new recording location - it was called ‘Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.’

A classic song about running away from your problems down to the islands with a bottle of booze, ‘Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes‘ is one of the most well-known Buffett songs. A pure Buffett travelogue that goes down as easy as a Mai Tai at sunset. The “… sons of bitches …” lyric has to be edited to “… some bruises, some stiches …” when the single came out in 1977. It goes hand-in-hand with summertime, drinking the night away and deciding to deal with the stresses of real life… tomorrow, or whenever you get back! Many say Buffett is merely singing about a state of mind, but I think that change Buffett sings of can only really happen when one gets out into the world, (speaking as one who only started this series as a way to cope being caged up through the rotten Covid lockdown period, unable to get away as I usually do) -
“… Reading departure signs in some big airport / reminds me of the places I've been /
Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure / makes me want to go back again /
If it suddenly ended tomorrow / I could somehow adjust to the fall /
Good times and riches and son-of-a-bitches / I've seen more than I can recall …” -


So with that, we finish today in 1977, but tomorrow will see more from Jimmy Buffett’s epochal ”Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” album, including his biggest hit, and then move beyond, as his “Gulf and Western” sound is established as a whole sub-genre of country music that lives on to this day.
 
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I worked at a school that played music before school, lunchtime and after school as everyone left. It was a long time ago and they used a series of cassette tapes that someone had recorded. I didn't like a lot of the stuff so one weekend I pinched a lot of them and taped over a number of songs on each tape with Jimmy Buffett. It went on for most of the remainder of the year. They tried skipping past but then it reappeared later. The chucked out the cassette and put a new one in but it kept appearing. The Maths Dept. were very upset, while the PE Dept. thought it was very funny.
 
CliffMcTainshaw said:
I worked at a school that played music before school, lunchtime and after school as everyone left. It was a long time ago and they used a series of cassette tapes that someone had recorded. I didn't like a lot of the stuff so one weekend I pinched a lot of them and taped over a number of songs on each tape with Jimmy Buffett. It went on for most of the remainder of the year. They tried skipping past but then it reappeared later. The chucked out the cassette and put a new one in but it kept appearing. The Maths Dept. were very upset, while the PE Dept. thought it was very funny.
Click to expand...

Now that’s a Buffett worthy story! :D

The song was actually condemned by the U.S. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Education Association for having a bad influence on children's education. Jon Stewart performed a comedy sketch on The Daily Show referencing the song, entitled "Math Is Quite Pleasant".
 
In his early 20’s in the late 1960’s, the Mississippi-born, Alabama-bred Buffett was in thrall to the thoughtful balladry of Gordon Lightfoot (posts # 696-702) and his deep Southern roots added a country spin to his sound. His early efforts didn’t follow the expected country formulas, not even the progressive Outlaw formula, and they were hard for the Nashville establishment to categorise. His albums and singles flip-flopped between the country and pop charts. He came off like a cross between an outlaw country rebel and a late 1960’s hippy, with songs criticising materialism, religious hypocrisy and jingoistic politics, extolling the glories of getting high and having as much sex as possible and being a thorn in the side of the law. Naturally, the conservative mainstream rejected him, but the country outlaw fans also weren’t sure about what to make of him - despite his friendship with Jerry Jeff Walker (# 844-847), who first invited him down to Key West and co-wrote ‘Railway Lady’ for Lefty Frizzell (see # 846 for Jerry Jeff’s version and # 872 for Buffett’s version) In the end, by 1977 where we left off yesterday, Buffett finally found success by going his own way, developing his own sub-genre.

Jimmy Buffett wittingly (and cleverly) dubbed his music style and sound as “gulf and western”, a riff on the name of a major entertainment and apparel conglomerate of the time (which later purchased Paramount), as well as a knowing nod to the “country and western” genre but it was also an apt description of a musician who combined country, rock and pop with stories about sailing, fishing, drinking and gallivanting around in the tropical seas and islands of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, a style that would only become more distinctive - and popular.

Now back to Buffett’s 7th and his breakthrough 1977 album “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude”. Largely thanks to the single ‘Margaritaville’, the album was a major crossover hit and achieved Platinum status the same year, peaking at # 2 on the country chart and # 12 on the pop chart. Later to become a Parrothead (more on that term tomorrow) anthem. Written one night in 1977 after Buffett discovered the cocktail that would change his life - not in Florida as you would expect in an Austin restaurant in Buffett’s second favourite state, Texas. The song itself is classic Buffett. He nibbles on sponge cake, loses a saltshaker, finds a tattoo of a Mexican senorita he doesn’t remember getting and sits around on his porch strumming his guitar and boiling shrimp. Thus, ‘Margaritaville’ illustrates the laid-back, hedonistic lifestyle Buffett and his music have become synonymous with. The song brims with visions of thongs, beach chairs, margaritas and sunshine, but reveals a darker reality as it comes to a close.

As much a state of mind as a song, Buffett’s cinematically drawn state of nirvana is still an absorbing listen as it also reveals a darker truth beneath its carefree surface. As the choruses progress - each time achieving a bit more clarity - the song actually reveals the song is about a loser, a man drowning of sorrows and denial over a failed romance. The final chorus concludes -
“… Wasted away again in Margaritaville / Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt /
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame / But I know, it’s my own damn fault” -

‘Margaritaville’, which peaked at # 13 on the country chart and # 8 on the pop chart, has lived on become Jimmy Buffett’s signature song. While some (inevitably) hate on this one, beneath the supposedly laidback, margarita drinking, hedonistic (but also university educated when that still meant something) Buffett hid a sharp business mind as he turned the success of the song about drinking tons of margaritas and living a low-key, island lifestyle and his “gulf and western” into maybe the best branding device popular music (in its broad multi-genre meaning) has ever seen, spawning what has eventually grown into a billion dollar franchising business named after the song. It’s a winning formula based on providing a place where one can hang out, get drunk, be happy, sing Jimmy Buffett songs and forget about all the crap going on in the rest of the world.

My song selection for Buffett is biased in favour of songs he wrote - afterall he‘s penned more than enough to choose from. But this one is the exception. Another from the “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude” album, most assume, on listening, this was written by Buffett - he himself said it’s like a song he should’ve written. But ‘Banana Republics’ was written by one of his good friends, Steve Goodman, who was best known as the composer of ‘City Of New Orlean’, which became Arlo Guthrie only hit single in 1972 and went on to become a country standard, covered by many but most successfully by Willie Nelson, whose # 1 hit version in 1984 won him a grammy (post # 787). Then in 1974, a John Prine co-write provided David Allan Coe his first top 10 hit with the satirical ’You Never Even Called Me by My Name‘, which good-naturedly spoofed stereotypical country music lyrics (# 830). Prine refused to take a songwriter's credit for the song, thinking it might upset some, but Goodman bought Prine a jukebox as a gift from his publishing royalties.

I’ll let Buffett own words explain ‘Banana Republics’ - “Yeah, Steve went to St Croix and wrote that song there because I was down in the Caribbean at that time. And when I heard it, I just loved it. It sounded like a song that I should have written. … It’s a great story. It paints a real accurate vision of expatriates. For people that know them and for people that just don’t, it’s a very vivid image. It still is, too. That’s probably, y’know, you get into the most requested songs, favourites of mine or my performances, ‘Banana Republics‘ has got to be one of them, and I think it’s for that reason. You talk about humour, the wordplay … Yeah, the whole thing. It’s just a great song” -
“… Late at night you will find them / In the cheap hotels and bars / Hustling the senoritas /
While they dance beneath the stars / Spending those renegade pesos /On a bottle of rum and a lime /
Singing words we can dance to / and a melody that rhymes …” -

Don’t think the lyrics of ‘Banana Republics’ only applies to American expats in the Caribbean or Central America (though there are heaps of them there and as Buffett says above, the lyrics are still relevant). But go through Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, parts of the Phillipines, Bali and Lombok and you’ll find plenty of Aussie expats doing much the same thing. S.E. Asia and/or South Pacific like Vanuatu and Fiji, are, at least in the context discussed here, kinda the Australian equivalent of what the Caribbean islands are to the U.S.

Jimmy Buffett certainly wrote some great songs about partying, but he also penned some of the best odes to the sea that have ever been written. ‘Son of a Son of a Sailor‘ falls into the latter category. An adventure in a song with its airy instrumentation and lonesome harmonica flourishes, it is a bittersweet homage to the man who came before him and informed his music. Buffett wrote the title track to his 1978 album about his grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, who went on to become a huge influence on his grandson’s life. He was a sailor born in the town of Rose Blanche in Newfoundland, Canada, who moved to Glace Bay in Nova Scotia - "I saw a picture of my grandfather after he had come back from a trip to Nova Scotia,” the younger Buffett explained about the song. “He was born there but left when he was a young man and didn't return until he was 84. He was standing on dock staring at an old sailing schooner, and the look on his face told the story of where he had come from and where he had been. I have always been very proud of my heritage as a sailor and wrote this for the men who taught me the skills”. So ’Son Of A Son Of A Sailor’ isn’t really one for chugging down loads of boat drinks - it’s more fit for quietly sippin’ along with at sunset, a margarita in hand, watching the other crafts sail in after you’ve tied yours to the slip -

Strangely enough, the opening and titular track of the 1978 album Son Of Son Of A Sailor didn’t become a feature of Buffett’s concerts until the 2005 Salty Piece of Land tour. It’s always been a firm critics and fan favourite though.

Buffett had totally perfected his peculiar brand of country infused tropical yacht rock by the time of his 8th studio album,“Son of a Son of a Sailor”, and this party anthem was it’s crazy centrepiece. ’Cheeseburger In Paradise’ is a buoyant and sincere celebration of high-calorie, high-cholesterol and high-spirited goodness. The lyrics describe a man who’s gone 10 weeks trying to “amend his carnivorous habits” by replacing his high-calorie, high-cholesterol goodies with just eating sunflower seeds and drinking carrot juice, but he can’t help daydreaming about eating a big greasy cheeseburger with chips and ketchup, all washed down with a cold beer.

Buffett explained how he composed this song from a real life event - “The myth of the Cheeseburger In Paradise goes back to a long trip on my first boat, the Euphoria. We had run into some very rough weather crossing the Mona Passage between Hispanola and Puerto Rico and broke our new bowsprit. The ice in our box had melted, and we were doing the canned-food-and-peanut-butter diet. The vision of a piping hot cheeseburger kept popping into my mind”. When they finally made it to land on the island of Tortola, he explained they kissed the ground and then headed to the marina restaurant where a big greasy American cheeseburger just happened to be on the menu. Paradise Found! -


Rancho Deluxe is a 1975 comedy (now a long forgotten flop) starring Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston as cattle rustlers in Livingston, Montana (another wonderful place to visit, nestled in a beautiful mountain valley not far from Yellowstone, with great camping grounds and hotels, old school bars and honky tonks). Buffett contributed several songs to the soundtrack, including ’Livingston Saturday Night’ an upbeat rockabilly honky tonk stomper, in the tradition of Johnny Horton’s ‘Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor’, about gearing up for a night out on the town. Buffett performs it in the movie at a western bar with actor Warren Oates and Thomas McGuane, a good friend of Buffett, and the film's screenwriter, as members of his band. Oates mimes a harmonica part played by Greg "Fingers" Taylor of Buffett's real-life Coral Reefer Band, while McGuane plays mandolin. Buffett released this as a single in 1978 when he included it on his “Son of a Son of a Sailor” album. The reference to Tony Lama - "… You got your Tony Lama's on your jeans pressed tight …" - is to a company that makes western/cowboy style boots. Buffett is in fine country rockabilly form here, pumped up by a hot brass section and Greg “Fingers” Taylor’s fiery harmonica solo -

Buffett also sang this in the 1978 movie FM, a comedy-drama about a rock radio station, which also featured appearances by Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, and REO Speedwagon.

Jimmy Buffett has a lot of stories to tell about the many real life adventures he’s had. one, from 1974 involves an incident between Jimmy and Buford Pusser, the legendary sheriff based on the Tennessee and Alabama border, the scourge of bootleggers and dope peddlers whose unusual style of strong arm order is portrayed in the 1973 movie Walking Tall and the 1978 TV movie A Real American Hero: Buford Pusser. On the day Jimmy recorded ’God's own Drunk’, he and drummer Sammy Creason went to a bar and wound up getting smashed with tequila. After leaving the bar they couldn’t find the car they came in, so Buffett got up on the hood of a Cadillac to get a better view of the parking lot - stomping with his golf shoes on. The owner of the car, who just happened to be Buford Pusser, also just happened to be returning to his car. Buffett and Creason saw him coming after them and ran toward their car, got in it, but we’re too drunk to start in time. Pusser wound up flattening Creason‘s nose into a bloody pulp and pulling a big clump of Buffett’s hair out, leaving a bloody sore spot on his scalp, before they could get away. Later Buffett and Creason returned to the bar and found out it was Sheriff Pusser they got into a confrontation with and he was expected soon as the bar. Buffett and Creason immediately went to their rooms, thankful to be alive. The story is referred to in ‘Presents To Send You‘ from the 1974 “A1A“ album and also in ‘Semi-True Stories‘ from the 1999 album “Beach House On The Moon”.

With Jimmy Buffett and his “Gulf and Western” sub-genre still gaining ever more traction with a growing fan-base (even if most missed the subtle darker undertones in the lyrics of his drinking and part songs), so there’ll be more tomorrow, following his career on from 1978.
 
catscratchfever said:
The Louvin Brothers: Insured Beyond The Grave - a great documentary clocking in at just over an hour: classic songs, wonderful vocal harmonies, heaven to these ears!
Click to expand...

Damn you - Not having an hour to spare to watch this doco, I thought I’d just skim through this doco for 5-10 minutes by fast forwarding. Of course, I should’ve known better, as I got hooked in the first minute and ended up watching the entire
1 hr 7 mins of time I don’t have. A late night (of work) coming up for me now.

It’s a really great doco with it’s first hand account by Charlie Louvin of their career and of Ari’s tragic end to his difficult life. I also picked out a lot of other little gems on the doco like Anita Carter on the slap bass 16 minutes in and a young Chet Atkins on guitar etc. Great stuff - it has far more information than I could give in my history (and being a first hand account, more reliable). So I took the liberty of adding this doco (with due attribution) to post # 295 on the Louvin Brothers.
 
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By the start of the 1980’s, Buffett's yearly albums had stopped going gold, and he briefly tried the traditional country market again. But by the middle of the decade, it was his yearly summer tours that were filling his bank account, as a steadily growing core of Sun Belt fans dubbed "Parrotheads" made his concerts into Mardi Gras-like affairs. Buffett launched his Margaritaville line of clothes and opened the first of his Margaritaville clubs in Key West. He also turned his literary skills from song-writing to fiction writing, landing on the national best-seller lists.

The term "Parrot Head" began in 1985 at a Jimmy Buffett concert at the Timberwolf Amphitheater at Kings Island amusement park outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. Buffett has said numerous times that he attributes much of his fame to this area. This term essentially means that one is a fan. At the show, Jimmy commented about everyone wearing Hawaiian shirts and parrot hats and how they kept coming back to see his shows, just like Deadheads. Timothy B. Schmit, then a member of the Coral Reefer Band (now with Eagles), coined the term "Parrot Head" to describe each of those fans.

The common stereotype is of a person wearing a Hawaiian shirt, thongs and board shorts, or a grass skirt and a coconut bra while banging down margaritas. In fact, despite their casual attire and bad fashion, most Parrotheads are at least middle and upper-middle class boat owners or just downright filthy rich, owning big boats and/or aeroplanes. The first Parrothead Club in Atlanta with the idea of "party with a purpose," and (in a condition imposed by Buffett for all official Parrothead clubs) hold fundraiser events for many different causes. The Parrothead club concept quickly spread. Events range from single act concerts or happy hours to the annual Meeting of the Minds in Key West, Florida, which attracts several thousand Parrotheads each year. By 2009, there were 237 Parrothead Club chapters in the U.S., Canada and Australia. The total membership by 2009 was 27,000. In the 8 year period 2002-2009, Parrothead member clubs raised over $19M to support charitable organisations, and collectively worked almost 2.5 million hours of community service.

Now, it’s back to Buffett’s music, taking it up from 1979. As the upbeat opening track to Buffett’s “Volcano” album, ’Fins‘ marked the beginning of Buffett’s transition into the 1980’s. There is a little bit of a 1979 Pablo Cruise sound happening on this one, but ‘Fins‘ (and much of “Volcano“) still slaps. ‘Fins’ is fun and funny, Buffett’s best rocker even before the Parrotheads started making the en-masse dorsals above their heads at concerts. The song itself song is alerting a woman being circled by “land sharks“ men attempting to pick her up -
“… Can’t you feel them circling, honey? / Can’t you feel them swimming around? / You got fins to the left, fins to the right / And you’re the only bait in town …” -


Buffett plays historian, as it were, on this good-humoured, Caribbean-flavoured reggae/calypso-tinged ditty about the real-life - and at the time dormant - Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat Island. The album’s title track, ‘Volcano’ only got to a modest # 66 on the U.S. pop chart but amazingly went all the way to # 1 in Canada (evidence of superior taste?). It’s fun and pleasantly tropical, but its lyrics deal with a far more serious matter. When Buffett headed to a remote Caribbean island to record his latest album in 1979, little did he and his band know a huge local volcano was on the verge of erupting near the studio they booked. Ever the adventurous type, despite his worries, Buffett proceeded with the project, the whole time watching out the studio windows at the smoking timebomb. When his guitarist started playing a rhythmic groove, he chimed in with some lyrics about
all the places he didn’t want to go should the volcano erupt and blow him away - including New York City and Nashville -

Luckily for Buffett and his band, the volcano waited until 1995 to explode, long after the release of the 1979 album landed him a coveted Rolling Stone feature article, causing wide spread devastatio and the evacuation of 7,000 people, 2/3 of the islands total population. It’s capitol, Plymouth, and a swag of villages were buried under a thick layer of ash and to this day the entire southern half of the island, including Plymouth, has been cordoned off and completely abandoned. Buffett led a fundraising campaign to assist the refugees from the disaster.

A 1979 B-side (to ‘Survive’) is a Buffett mission statement, the Caribbean flavoured steel drum-glimmering ’Boat Drinks’, a song reminiscent of warmer climes and slower tempo, but driven by some meaty guitars that give these “Drinks” a punch. Buffett has songs about boats, songs about beaches, songs about drinking and sometimes songs that combine all those passions into one. 'Boat Drinks' was written in the winter of 1979 when Jimmy was staying in Boston, going crazy of being cooped up and longing to get away from all the cold weather to sunnier climates down south, writing - “It was February in Boston, and I was cold and wanted to go home. Rum and tonic was the antifreeze, and the newspaper was full of ads for warmer climates. ... I came out of the bar and couldn't find a cab except for the one that was running in front of the nearby hotel. There was no driver in it, and I was too cold to care about the consequences. There is an old Navy expression which says, 'Beg forgiveness, not permission.' I hopped in and drove back to my hotel. I did leave the fare on the seat”. Mentions of hockey games and cold temperatures frost over the tune as Buffett begs for his boat drinks. All he could do in the meantime was order up a tray full of “boat drinks” and shoot holes in his freezer. Been there -
“… Twenty degrees and the hockey games on / Nobody cares; they are way too far gone / Screamin' "Boat drinks, " somethin' /
To keep them all warm / This morning I shot six holes in my freezer / I think I got cabin fever …” -


‘One Particular Harbour’ is a buoyant, dynamic delight inspired by island travels, with an infectious chorus groove and recurring lyrics in Tahitian for authenticity. Buffett has said he was moved to write it one afternoon during one of his many journeys through the islands, as he sat on the balcony of his hotel room watching the local children (memorialised in the lyric - "… Where children play on the shore each day … "). It’sone of Buffett's more popular songs with fans, played at almost all of his concerts. The original 1983 studio recording feels a bit tame, subsequent live arrangements gave the tune more oomph. Buffett recorded live versions of the song on the “Feeding Frenzy, Buffett Live: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays” album, the video Live by the Bay and 2 seperate recordings are included on the 2007 release “Live in Anguilla”. This is my pick as the best recording, from the live “Feeding Frenzy, Buffett Live: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays” album -


I’ve already mentioned a couple of days back that Buffett obtained a degree in journalism and worked for a short time as the Nashville correspondent for Billboard magazine. He was an avid reader, his two favourite authors being the great humorist and traveller, Mark Twain and the action adventurer, Ernest Hemingway. As if his song-writing isn’t enough, Buffett has made full use of his literary skills, writing 3 # 1 best sellers. 1989’s Tales from Margaritaville and 1992’s Where Is Joe Merchant? both spent over 7 months on The New York Times Best Seller fiction list. His memoir A Pirate Looks at Fifty, published in 1998, went straight to # 1 on the New York Times Best Seller nonfiction list, making him one of the few authors to have reached # 1 on both the fiction and nonfiction lists.

Tales from Margaritaville is a collection of short stories published in 1989 - An Introduction: Changes in Latitude contains Walkabout and Where is Margaritaville?, the later designed to answer a question Buffett says that he is frequently asked. The Heat Wave Chronicles contains 6 short stories, all based in the fictional town of Heat Wave, Alabama, on the also fictional island of Snake Bite Key. "Take Another Road", "Off to See the Lizard", "Boomerang Love", "The Swamp Creature Let One In", "The Pascagoula Run", and "I Wish Lunch Could Last Forever" comprise the Heat Wave Chronicles. Five of these short stories are also song titles on Buffett's 1989’s “Off to See the Lizard” album, including ‘Take Another Road’.

‘Take Another Road’ is all about deciding how you want your life to go and taking responsibility for making those choices. It ties in with the story of Tully Mars in Tales from Margaritaville, the character based on Buffett’s hero, Mark Twain. The line - “Seen the false horizons fade away like bisons”, relates false horizons to the trends and false lifestyles people conform to. This powerful simile compares these types of horizons with the bison that have faded away, for both will share the same fate. The next line, “Headed for the jungle, cowboy can't endure”, contains irony as it compares people trapped in a rut to a cowboy in a jungle. It would be uncomfortable, restricting and inapt for the cowboy to be in the jungle, just like it would be for those who just blindly follow the masses. “Never look back, that's what he swore” tells the listener to be one’s own self without fearing what others think or the negative consequences, such as losing popularity. The stanza concludes - “I'll take my pony to the shore /Somewhere, somewhere”. Meaning, take another road somewhere; it doesn’t mater. Just as long as its your own.

Next, the chorus tells the audience to take another road. This parallels Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken. The chorus is used to emphasise the central theme - “Take another road to a hiding place / Disappear without a trace” tells us to take your own path in life. Not necessarily a secret path, but one that another cannot easily copy. Buffett, the constant traveller, took this philosophy not only from Mark Twain but also from his own life experience - first by going to Nashville to try his luck as a singer-songwriter, then, much more decisively, when he took himself to the unlikely location of Key West, where he forged his own path to future success. He took the road less travelled by, and that made all the difference -


So that’s all for today, as we leave Buffett in the 1980’s concentrating more on live performances than cutting studio albums, and now a top selling author while his song-writing declined Just as his business interests started taking off. But there’s a few more Jimmy Buffett stories to tell as well as more music - tomorrow.
 
As posted by clifftainshaw just yesterday - (which saves me going into much detail here, as it’s in the link) -
Jimmy Buffett - How much is he worth?
Why Warren Buffett Wants Jimmy Buffett To Write Him Into His Will
Buffett has developed a multi-billion-dollar global lifestyle brand in the form of Margaritaville-themed stores, hotels, bars, frozen shrimp, restaurants, daiquiri makers, pickleball paddles, beer, water parks, a SiriusXM radio station, luxury resorts, tequila, footwear, chips, salsa, casinos, retirement villages, salad dressing and Buffett’s Coral Reefer THC, all resulting from his catchy 1977 hit. It began, more or less, when someone else tried to. Restaurant chain Chi-Chi's tried to trademark "Margaritaville" as a drink special. Buffett sued, won and immediately began branding the name everywhere he could. This link also gives an indication of the extent of Buffett’s business empire, which is still expanding -
Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville - Wikipedia
Suffice to say, Buffett is the wealthiest artist I’ve covered in this series, even comfortably surpassing Dolly Parton. For all his easygoing, laid-back, margarita drinking, simple island life persona he exudes, Buffett has shown a remarkable hard-headed knack for business, once he really got going in the 1980’s.

A lifelong sailor, as we’ve already seen, Buffett is also famous in the yachting fraternity (many of which are Parrotheads), credited with popularising recreation island and ocean sailing, and a resulting massive increase in sales of ocean going yachts in the U.S. over the last 40 years. He owns a fleet of more than a dozen beautiful vintage wooden yachts and also had one of those big billionaire class boats for a bit, but, being a genuine sailor, decided it wasn’t really his sort of boat and downsized to a a custom designed and made 15 metre (still a big size) motor sailer a few years back, which he uses on his long trips.

But not satisfied just with sailing, Buffett also has a love of flying, which first blossomed when he was in college. A friend of his was a pilot and introduced him to flying. Buffett had a flight lesson here or there but it didn’t amount to much in the early days. Money was tight and flying lessons certainly ain’t cheap - if God had intended man to fly, he would’ve given him more money. However, that flying bug stayed with Buffett. He set the goal of having his license by his 40th birthday. So as more success brought more money, he was able to resume his flying dream, purchasing a Lake Renegade amphibian and was instructed to his private pilot license for a single engine land and sea ratings just a year shy of his 40th birthday on Christmas Day 1986. Buffett went on to obtain a commercial pilot license with ratings for multi-engine land and sea aircraft, and an instrument rating for flying in clouds and low weather. Buffett has since owned several vintage planes including the Hemisphere Dancer, a restored Grumman Albatross, which was sometimes flown over concert venues.

There have also been a few close calls in Buffett’s flying career. In 1994, he was performing a water takeoff in his Grumman Widgeon when he encountered a swell in Nantucket and was unable to maintain control. The aircraft nosed over and sank but fortunately he sustained only minor injuries and was able to swim to safety. Buffett credits his survival to the Naval survival training he had to complete before being able to take a spin in a naval F-14 Tomcat fighter jet from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

In 1996, Buffett’s Hemisphere Dancer was shot at by Jamaican authorities as he taxied in the waters near Negril. The Jamaicans had mistaken it for a drug-runner’s plane, though Buffett had “only come for chicken”. On board the plane was Chris Blackwell from Island Records and U2’s Bono and his family. When they heard the shots, Bono, his wife Ali, and their children dove for cover fearing they were about to be killed. Bono described the incident - “These boys were shooting all over the place. I felt as if we were in the middle of a James Bond movie - only this was real. It was absolutely terrifying and I honestly thought we were all going to die. Thank God we were safe and sound. My only concern was for their safety. It was very scary, let me tell you. You can’t believe the relief I felt when I saw the kids were okay”. Bono was so shocked that he and his family left Jamaica and flew straight to Miami. The Hemisphere Dancer escaped relatively unscathed except for a few bullet holes. Buffett, of course, penned a tune about the incident, ‘Jamaica Mistaica‘, which appeared on the 1996 “Banana Wind“ album -

In 2003, the Hemisphere Dancer was retired and put on display, bullet holes and all, at Margaritaville in Orlando.

I guess most here are used to peering up at the night sky on a clear night and spotting the Southern Cross, the stars that adorn our flag, and the Kiwi one too. From where we live, it’s always up there somewhere, 12 months of the year. But for Americans and Europeans who know their stars, the Southern Cross is something exotic, impossible to see unless they travel down to Southern latitudes - much like we have to travel up north to spot the Big Dipper (I still remember the first time I spotted it). The Cross is, however, visible, albeit low above the Southern horizon, in March in the Caribbean. So the image of the Southern Cross as a symbol of sailing South, escaping to new sights and experiences, along with the sailing story-line, naturally appealed to Buffett‘s wanderlust and led him to cover another song that was perfect for him.

‘Southern Cross’ was written by Stephen Stills (of Cosby, Stills & Nash fame) with help from Richard and Michael Curtis. Stills explained - "The Curtis Brothers brought a wonderful song called 'Seven League Boots', but it drifted around too much. I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce. It's about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds”. Buffett’s version first appeared on his 1999 Live album, “Buffett Live: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays“ (the title comes from the days of the week he performs live concerts) and it’s become a staple of Buffett's concerts.

The lyrics of the song seem a bit complex for some, often misinterpreted. It’s about a man who sails the Pacific following a failed love affair. During the voyage, the singer takes comfort in sailing - "… We got 80 feet of the waterline / Nicely making way …”, in the beauty of the sea, and particularly in the Southern Cross. He is running from a failed relationship, but remains still in love with her. His first sight of the Southern Cross makes him realise it can’t go on - it really is finished and his love for her is an anchor dragging him down -
“… When you see the southern cross for the first time / You understand just why you came this way /
Cause the truth you might be running from is so small / But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day /
And I'm heading all the way, my dreams are dying / And my love is an anchor tied to you, tied with a silver chain …”.
But he still have one thing left keeping him afloat as a person, his final consolation - music -
"I have my ship / And all her flags are a-flyin' / She is all that I have left / And music is her name …“.
The last lyric is filled with sad irony as he tries to convince himself he will eventually forget his former lover, although he knows this will never happen any more than he can forget the beauty of the Southern Cross -
"… Somebody fine will come along and make me forget about loving you / And the Southern Cross” -


In 2004, as part of his extensive charity fund-raising for various causes, Buffett raised funds with his Surviving the Storm hurricane relief concert in Orlando to provide relief for hurricane victims in Florida, Alabama and the Caribbean affected by the 4 major hurricanes that left so much devastation in that terrible hurricane season. He then wrote and released ‘Bama Breeze’ in 2006 as a tribute to all of the local beach bars and dives destroyed in the horrendous and tragic Gulf hurricane seasons of 2004-05. The video was shot in the ruins of the Firedog Saloon right off South Beach Blvd in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. This area was one of the worst hit during Katrina - in part of the video, Buffett is actually on part of the Bay St. Louis Bridge, which was destroyed by Katrina's storm surge -

In 2010, Buffett, a Gulf Coast native, put on a free concert on the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama in response to the BP Gulf oil disaster. The concert was aired on CMT TV. The 35,000 free tickets were given away within minutes to help draw people back to Alabama's beaches. It must’ve worked because when I went along the Gulf Coast in 2019, all those bars and dives are back and humming (actually, for me, the off-beach dives are the best - the drinks much cheaper, you actually meet locals, not just tourists, the music is usually better and the patrons far more interesting).

The island-time expert and parrothead leader tells us exactly where they need to go to wash your troubles away, and that place can be found ‘Down at the Lah De Dah‘, a song perfectly in sync with his philosoph. The “Lah De Dah” in the song’s hook is a symbolic stand-in for your favourite watering hole - as we know, Buffett himself owns a heap of them (though they’re a bit too pricy and touristy for my tastes. I like to seek out the back alley cheap dives where the locals congregate). A 2011 single release, his Coral Reefer Band sounds crisp and tight in the recording. And the tried-and-true lighthearted message and easygoing vocals highlight the fact that Buffett’s pioneering “Gulf and Western” country brand has serious longevity -


You might be wondering what Jimmy Buffett does when he’s not touring and performing on his concerts around either in the U.S. or internationally, not recording a new album, not attending to the various diverse elements of his billion dollar plus business empire, not writing best selling fiction novels or yet another song, not acting or appearing on various TV shows or movies, not undertaking his extensive charity undertakings, not sailing his yacht around the Gulf or Caribbean or up and down the U.S. Atlantic coast and not flying one of his planes to various parts of the U.S. or other parts of the world, not spending family time with his wife of over 40 years or their 3 adult children. What does he do in all his spare time when he ain’t doing any of the above? Easy - he surfs. As often as he can. And like seemingly everything else he puts his mind (or body) to, he’s very good at it.

Buffett has been a surfer as well as a sailor from when he was a teenager growing up in Mobile, Alabama - “There wasn’t much surf on the Gulf Coast, we had to go find it. We’d surf hurricanes in the ship channel.” Buffett has never served professional, but he has hung out and surfed with professionals and counts Kelly Slater as one of his closest friends. In 2009, Buffett brought James O'Mahouney’s surf collection to Ohana Waikiki Beachcomber, creating the Honululu Surfing Museum. In his 28th studio album, “Songs From St. Somewhere”, which peaked at # 4, showing Buffett’s appeal hasn’t faded one bit, one of the best songs is Mark Knopfler’s ‘Oldest Surfer on the Beach‘. Knopfler plays guitar for the track, but Buffet’s aged voice lends the perfect beachside gravitas the lyrics require. The lyrics, while coming from Knopfler, are so in-tune with Buffett that it resonates with any soul feeling the stretchmarks of time. There’s something about knowing this man, though now past his prime surfing years, is still out catching waves at 76 years of age – but also lends incredible power to the poignant lyrics of ‘Oldest Surfer, -
“… I stopped searching for perfection / Many waves ago / What really matters is here and now / That’s about all I know /
Gonna catch me a big ‘ole roller / Sun settin’ on the sea / Ride it in on her glass shoulder / The water cold and grey like me -

In 2009, Buffett recorded ‘Surfing in a Hurricane‘, written by him and Will Kimbrough for his album “Buffet Hotel”, recalling his days of riding those hurricane swells. In 2018, the 71-year-old Buffett grabbed his surfboard and hit the waves at Folly Beach, an island in South Carolina, one of the state’s best surf spots - catching the big waves caused by an incoming Force 4 Hurricane Florence. The mayor of Folly Beach closed the bridge onto the island, cutting off inbound traffic and a mandatory evacuation has been in effect for 2 days. But Buffett and a few other serious, or foolhardy, surfers, either somehow didn’t hear or didn’t heed all the warnings, went out and rode the huge waves, and Buffett tweeted a photo of the fun he was having on the Hurricane waves. But to his credit, becoming aware of the reaction setting in, he appended his post with a caution to any potential copycats (or parroting Parrotheads, perhaps) - “On a serious note - respect mother nature, please be safe and listen to your local authorities”.

That’s enough for today - the trouble with covering Jimmy Buffett is that’s he’s done so many things and given too many good stories to tell. I’ve decided to add just a small amount tomorrow to conclude his career to date.
 
After Buffett divorced his first wife in 1971 And fled Nashville to Key West (working as the first mate on the yacht of industrialist Foster Tagle while developing his “Gulf And Western” genre, playing the town's bars at night while his song-writing blossomed under the spell of the Key West tropical climate and lifestyle, a mutual friend introduced Buffett to Jane Slagsvol in 1972, and the two were eventually married in 1977. The couple have since had 3 children and 51 years after they first dated, they are still married.

I’ve mentioned Buffett’s extraordinary business success, becoming a self-made billionaire. Buffett is not an absent owner of his company, leaving it to others to run - that ain’t his style (despite all the concert touring, sailing, surfing and flying he does). He’s somehow still finds the time to be CEO of his company, Margaritaville Holdings, and when he’s not having fun with his concerts, sailing, surfing and flying, he keeps a keen financial eye on the company (so much for hating maths) and does a lot of negotiating for new business opportunities for his ever-expanding business empire.

In 2006, Buffett launched a cooperative project with the Anheuser-Busch brewing company to produce beer under the Margaritaville Brewing label called LandShark Lager. In 2018, Buffett, taking a leaf from Willie Nelson, licensed "Coral Reefer" brand marijuana, but it seems this is one Buffett business venture that didn’t fly high - unlike Willie, he doesn’t smoke dope (or anything else). Despite his margarita guzzling pretence, he drinks rarely and sparely - unlike his much wilder youth in Nashville (where everyone drank or took pills or cocaine) and his first few hedonistic years in Key West.

Besides all his charity work, briefly mentioned yesterday, Buffett is also a recognised environmentalist, especially in efforts to save manatees and their habitats in the Florida Everglades through his Save the Manatee Club, which he founded with former Florida governor Bob Graham. One of the two manatees trained to interact with researchers at Mote Marine Laboratory is named Buffett in honour of his efforts . Buffett is also a longtime supporter of and major donor to the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory.

Over the years since his breakthrough 1977 “Changes In Latitude, Changes In Attitude” album, Buffett has also made dozens of cameo appearances, and an occasional acting role, in numerous films and TV shows, including 2015’s Jurassic World, where he was swilling a margarita when the dinosaurs escaped their enclosure and the carnage began. There’s far too many others for me to mention, but his Wiki page has an unusually detailed (and assumably accurate) rundown and listing of all his movie and TV appearances for any interested.

Buffett has enjoyed renewed popularity in the 21st century, his laidback, not-a-care-in-the-world lifestyle appealing to many a jaded disillusione, suburbanite. In 2003, even an international superstar like Alan Jackson wanted in on Buffett’s world. Stuck in a dead-end job just watching the clock and going nowhere, Jackson decides to just pissoff one lunchtime and head to the nearest bar, figuring it must be time to clock off somewhere in the world. After all, he asks himself (halfway through the song), “What would Jimmy Buffett do?”. And Jimmy Buffett answers -
‘It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere‘ -

Buffett’s collaboration with Jackson on “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere” (2003) provided Buffett with his first # 1 hit on the country chart and won the CMA Best Vocal Event of 2003, a Grammy nomination for Best Collaboration With Vocals and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Song of the Year for 2004. Despite being in the music industry for 30 years at the time, these were the first awards Buffett had received.

‘Trip Around The Sun’, a 2004 duet with Martina McBride, was worthy of its Top 20 status. Unfortunately the video here is a bit old and grainy, not at all HD quality and there’s a better quality audio-only clip on YouTube. However, I still picked this video as, in addition to showing the performers, also it shows one of Buffett flying of his vintage airplanes I mentioned yesterday. The song itself is a philosophical take on celebrating another birthday. The singer, in the first stanza, tells us it’s been a tough year, and he’s just hanging on. But the song proceed on to a more positive note, sending the message not to be too fixated on the destination, but make sure you enjoy the journey along the way. As a very frequent traveller, this is excellent advice - albeit the song isn’t literally about travelling, but rather, the journey of life, with all its ups and downs. Don’t let the hard parts defeat you -
“… Yes I'll make a resolution / That I'll never make another one / Just enjoy this ride on my trip around the sun …” -


Alan Jackson isn’t the only one looking to Jimmy Buffett for inspirations. Another country artist influenced by Buffett’s pioneering work is singer-songwriter and band leader Zac Brown. Not only did Buffett’s coastal country sound influence his work, but reggae legends like Bob Marley did as well, giving Brown’s later country work a more sun-soaked feel. Zac Brown and his band invited the singer to join them when they were recording vocals down in Buffett’s Shrimpboat Sound studio in Key West. Zac Brown is in a post-breakup malaise, so he buys a boat and takes a permanent vacation. The video sees the return of the “Flody Boatwood“ character - played by the band's sound guy Jake Bartol - who first appeared in the video for ‘Toes’. This time around he’s even joined by "Brody Boatwood," played by ZBB guitarist Clay Cook, and “Jody Boatwood“, played by actress Juliette Lewis. The single ‘Knee Deep’ and the album “You Get What You Give”, both went all the way to # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada in 2010 -


OK, we saw ‘A Pirate Looks At Forty’ just a couple of days back, but it’s my personal Jimmy Buffett song, and I think this version Buffett did with the Zac Brown band for their 2010 “You Get What You Give” album deserves an airing too. I love the simple yet beautiful lyrics that open the along - “Mother, mother ocean. I have heard your call …”. The great song has been covered live by artists such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Matthews and many others -

When Buffett published his autobiography, he reworked the song’s title and added to the tale, this time documenting his own sea-faring and music-faring journey, titled A Pirate Looks at Fifty.

After Buffett set the country music world ablaze with his pioneering “Gulf And Western” sound, it was only a matter of time before a new generation of musicians came along ready and willing to carry on his torch. Kenny Chesney’s early hits are country through and through, his image soon turned Gulf And Western tropical with hits like ‘No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems‘. For his 2013 album “Songs for the Saints”, he paired up with Buffett for a brand new rendition of the trailblazer’s 1974 tune ‘Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season‘. The pair’s voices blend together effortlessly in the island-tinged musicians’ rendition -


Jimmy Buffett, at age 76, is about to drop his 30th studio album. He also has 9 compilation albums, 14 live albums, 8 specialty albums and 67 singles over the last 53 years. His biggest hit, "Margaritaville" has been inducted into the 2016 Grammy HoF for its cultural and historic significance. In 2023, the song was selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The song also lent its name to the 2017 musical Escape to Margaritaville, in which it featured alongside other Buffett songs.

Hopefully, I’ve shown that Jimmy Buffett as a seriously good song-writer (I rate his song-writing more than his vocals), capable of writing insightfully and lyrically on songs that have much more gravitas than his usually better known light party songs (albeit his most creative song-writing was back as a young man in the 1970’s). I didn’t get around to sharing all the stories about him - like the time he fell from the stage at the Sydney Opera House in 2012 and spent the night in hospital after hitting his head falling. He was very lucky as he fell right in front of a neuro-surgeon and bunch of doctors (typical of his concert audience, despite their being dressed like galahs), who provided assistance until the ambulance arrived.

Buffett’s “Gulf And Western” or “Trop-Rock” island sound has, besides giving a gigantic boost to Caribbean tourism (many now blame Buffett for making the Caribbean too popular), become established as a sun-genre which has influenced a whole raft of musicians. Besides Zac Brown (‘Toes’, ‘Knee Deep’ and ‘Island Song‘among others) and Kenny Chesney, Jack Johnson, dubbed “the Jimmy Buffett of the millennium”, has a lot of crossover among Buffett fans of Buffett. Other Buffet-inspired indie singer-songwriters are Don Middelbrook, Sunny Jim White, Jerry Diaz & Hannah’s Reef, Kelly McGuire and Mark Mulligan, Donnie Brewer, Thom Shepherd, Jesse Rice, Brittany Kingery, and the Southern Drawl Band. Most of these folks and many other similarly inspired artists can be heard on a number of “trop rock” radio stations, most of which are internet based. The best known are Beachfront Radio, Radio A1A, RadioTropRock.com, Songwriters Island Radio, Shorelife Radio and Palm Tree Radio. Such is the on-going influence of Jimmy Buffett and the kickback, cruisy island-lifestyle, wanderlust music genre he created.

Now, with Jimmy Buffett done, I too am now required to sail off (well, fly off actually). After being sent to various parts of the country over the last couple of years since the lockdown, this time I’m going a bit further, over to Germany and Austria, until I finish off in Paris, where I’ve been promised a riotous time might await. So of course there’ll be a break in this history series but at this stage I should be back in a month (Before the finals start). My next artist
 
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