page_title: Jimmy Buffett
section_title: Music career
hierarchical_section_title: Jimmy Buffett / Music / Music career
caption_attribution_description: Jimmy Buffett performs at Clemson University
context_page_description: James William Buffett is an American singer, songwriter, musician, author, actor, and businessman. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett has recorded hit songs including "Margaritaville" and "Come Monday". He has a devoted base of fans known as "Parrotheads".
  Aside from his career in music, Buffett is also a best-selling author and is involved in two restaurant chains named after two of his best-known songs; he owns the Margaritaville Cafe restaurant chain and co-developed the Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant chain. Buffett is one of the world's richest musicians, with a net worth of $550 million.
context_section_description: Buffett began his musical career in Nashville, Tennessee, during the late 1960s as a country artist and recorded his first album, the country-tinged folk rock record Down to Earth, in 1970. During this time, Buffett could be frequently found busking for tourists in New Orleans. Fellow country singer Jerry Jeff Walker took him to Key West on a busking expedition in November 1971. Buffett then moved to Key West and began establishing the easy-going beach-bum persona for which he is known. He started out playing for drinks at the Chart Room Bar in the Pier House Motel. Following this move, Buffett combined country, rock, folk, calypso and pop music with coastal as well as tropical lyrical themes for a sound sometimes called "Gulf and Western" (or tropical rock). Today, he is a regular visitor to the Caribbean island of Saint Barts and other islands where he gets inspiration for many of his songs and some of the characters in his books.
  With the untimely death of friend and mentor Jim Croce in September 1973, ABC/Dunhill Records tapped Buffett to fill his space. Earlier, Buffett had visited Croce's farm in Pennsylvania and met with Croce in Florida.
  Buffett's third album was 1973's A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean. Albums Living & Dying in 3/4 Time and A1A both followed in 1974, Havana Daydreamin' appeared in 1976, and Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes followed in 1977, which featured the breakthrough hit song "Margaritaville".
  During the 1980s, Buffett made far more money from his tours than his albums and became known as a popular concert draw. He released a series of albums during the following 20 years, primarily to his devoted audience, and also branched into writing and merchandising. In 1985, Buffett opened a "Margaritaville" retail store in Key West, and in 1987, he opened the Margaritaville Cafe.
  In 1997, Buffett collaborated with novelist Herman Wouk to create a musical based on Wouk's novel, Don't Stop the Carnival. Broadway showed little interest in the play (following the failure of Paul Simon's The Capeman), and it ran only for six weeks in Miami. He released an album of songs from the musical in 1998.
  In August 2000, Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band played on the White House lawn for then-President Bill Clinton.
  In 2003, he partnered in a partial duet with Alan Jackson for the song "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere", a number-one hit on the country charts. This song won the 2003 Country Music Association Award for Vocal Event of the Year. This was Buffett's first award in his 30-year recording career.
  Buffett's album License to Chill, released on July 13, 2004, sold 238,600 copies in its first week of release according to Nielsen Soundscan. With this, Buffett topped the U.S. pop albums chart for the first time in his  career.
  Buffett continues to tour every year, although he has shifted recently to a more relaxed schedule of around 20–30 dates, with infrequent back-to-back nights, preferring to play only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. This schedule provided the title of his 1999 live album.
  In the summer of 2005, Buffett teamed up with Sirius Satellite Radio and introduced Radio Margaritaville. Until this point, Radio Margaritaville was solely an online channel. Radio Margaritaville has remained on the service through Sirius' merger with XM Radio and currently appears as XM 24. The channel broadcasts from the Margaritaville Resort Orlando in Kissimmee, Florida.
  In August 2006, he released the album Take The Weather With You. The song "Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On" on this album is in honor of the survivors of 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Buffett's rendition of "Silver Wings" on the same album was made as a tribute to Merle Haggard. On August 30, 2007, he received his star on the Mohegan Sun Walk of Fame.
  On April 20, 2010, a double CD of performances recorded during the 2008 and 2009 tours called Encores was released exclusively at Walmart, Walmart.com, and Margaritaville.com.
  Buffett partnered in a duet with the Zac Brown Band on the song "Knee Deep"; released on Brown's 2010 album You G
caption: Buffett performs at Clemson University in 1977
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