He is a singer-songwriter, film producer and author born
James William Buffett in
Pascagoula, Mississippi and growing up beside Mobile Bay, Alabama.He studied at Auburn University and
The University of Southern Mississippi where he graduating with a history degree.During his time at University he
learned to play the guitar and when he left education he took on a job in
Nashville for Billboard Magazine where be was a correspondent.This was where he got his first job
as a country singer and in 1970 he released his first album Down to
Earth. At the same time he had taken up busking in New Orleans and
continued it in Florida when the country singer Jerry Jeff Walker took him
to Key West.This is where he
remained and took on the laid back beach loving personality, which he is often
identified with today.With
his band, the Coral
Reefer Band
, he continued to sing and write his own
songs taking his influences from the area round about him and although
releasing albums such as Havana Daydreamin' and A White Sport
Coat and a Pink Crustacean in
the early and mid-1970s, it wasn't until 1977 that he got his first
major hit with "Margaritaville"
from his Changes
in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes album. Throughout the 1980s he released
more albums with his tours being the far more lucrative of the two
and in 1985 he decided to branch out into business by opening up the
restaurant "Margaritaville" which is now a successful nationwide
chain. He further went on to co-develop the "Cheeseburger
in Paradise
" chain under a licensing
agreement.Never stopping
recording he released the albums Christmas Island and the children's
Parakeets and in 1997 he became involved in writing for theatre in
collaboration with Herman Wouk with the result being a musical based on Don't
Stop the Carnival.Still very much to the fore in
the 2000s he and his Coral
Reefer Band
performed at the
White House for Bill Clinton in 2000 and in 2003 he had the No. 1 country
hit "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" which won him his first Country Music
Award and his first No. 1 pop album chart hit License to Chill.He continues to record and appear
in concert on alternative nights of the week in regularly sold-out tours
and in 2005 brought in Channel 31 Radio Margaritaville in Orlando, Florida,
with Sirius Radio.To date
he has released more than 30 albums with many singles hitting the
country and/or pop charts including "Cheeseburger
in Paradise ", "The Great
Filling Station Hold Up", "Livingston Saturday Night", "Fins", "Margaritaville
" and
"Come Monday".Moving into the world of film he
acted and co-produced Hoot
in 2006 as well as writing the
soundtrack and he has also appeared in cameos in movies that include Cobb,
Hook, Repo Man, From the Earth to the Moon and Congo.It has been suggested that he
turned down a cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
Pearl.As an author his
books include Tales from Margaritaville, Where is Joe Merchant? and A
Pirate Looks At Fifty, all of which were No. 1 bestsellers, and the co-written
childrens books Trouble Dolls and The Jolly Mon where his co-author was his
daughter
Savannah Jane
.Other business ventures have seen him being a co-owner
of the Fort Myers Miracle and Madison Black Wolf minor league baseball
teams and under a co-operative agreement with Anheuser-Busch he produced
Land Shark Lager under the Margaritaville Brewing label.He also owns several stores.Much involved in charity work he
founded the Save the Manate Club, raised $3.4 million at his Hurricane
Relief Concert "Surviving the Storm", helped fund the "Singing for Change"
charity and his devoted fanclub known as "Parrotheads" also carry out their
own work for charitable causes.
