Jimmy Buffett
Singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett (1946-2023) regaled audiences for over five decades with songs about the faces and places he’d seen during his lifetime journey along the road less travelled. With Hemingway’s eye for detail and Mark Twain’s inclination for mischievous humor, Buffett’s music tells the stories of the hustlers, the beach bums and the pirates from all corners of the world. Through it all are woven the themes of escapism, wanderlust and an unbridled curiosity that makes life a journey worth taking.
Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. His grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, was a captain on a steamship and his father J.D. traveled to India and Africa with the Army Corps of Engineers before settling in Mobile. For young Jimmy, the Gulf of Mexico was the doorway to a world of adventure where the characters he heard about in his grandfather’s stories were waiting to be discovered. The siren call of exotic ports was in contrast to his days as a parochial school student and an altar boy, and it only took a guitar to take him off course from the life his parents had imagined for him.
When Jimmy saw how a fraternity brother 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 had his first band and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing 6 nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.
After graduation, Jimmy headed to Nashville to work for Billboard Magazine and to try his luck as a folk-country singer, releasing his first record, “Down To Earth” in 1970. However it was a fateful trip to Key West, Florida with Jerry Jeff Walker in 1971 that would give Jimmy the inspiration to merge his musicality, wanderlust and storytelling.
Key West in the 1970s was not the tourist-friendly town it is today – it was the last outpost of smugglers, con-men, artists and free-spirits who simply couldn’t run any further south in the mainland United States. It was there that the young musician thrown into the midst of this eclectic mix found his true voice as a songwriter – telling the stories of the wanderers, the adventurers and the forlorn.
In 1974, his song “Come Monday” from the fourth studio album “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” entered the Billboard charts, eventually peaking at number 30. That year found Jimmy touring solo-acoustic and performing at well-known folk venues across the country, from the Troubadour in Los Angeles to Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He hasn’t stopped touring since.
And then in 1977 came “Margaritaville.” A laid-back anthem about escapism and life in the tropics, the song spent 22 weeks on the Billboard chart, peaking at number 8. It catapulted Jimmy to national fame and, nearly a decade later, inspired Jimmy to launch a business empire.
After 27 studio albums, New York Times bestselling books, a Broadway play, numerous movie and television appearances, Grammy nominations and Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards, it was still the music that inspired Jimmy. He was just as likely to pop up and play an impromptu set alone at a Caribbean beach bar as he was to be on stage in front of 30,000 loyal ‘Parrothead’ fans. And after logging millions of miles on the road, on the ocean and in the air, distant ports still beckoned and the same unbridled curiosity drove him to keep looking for that next story to share via song.
Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs after a four year battle with Merkel Cell Skin Cancer. He was 76.
He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.
Bob Liberman
Bob Liberman was Buffett and Coral Reefer’s tour manager for 13 years starting in 1977 but had known Buffett since he was a student at University of Florida where he helped produce a show in the mid-70’s. Liberman was immortalized in Buffett’s song, The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful, when Jimmy called out his nickname, “Lip Balm.” Bob quit the band after meeting his wife in Tahiti in the late 80’s while there with Buffett, hoping to settle down from his life on the road.
Brent Taylor
Brent Taylor is the younger brother of legendary Coral Reefer, Greg “Fingers” Taylor. He was invited out on the road as an assistant tour manager in the late 70’s and continued to support the Coral Reefers for the next few years and later went on to support other major acts. Brent remains close with many Coral Reefers to this day.
Chris Robinson
Chris Robinson was a bartender at Key West’s Chart Room and Louie’s Backyard in the early 1970s and lived in the same house as Buffett for a couple years during that time. He remained close friends with Buffett until the musician’s death in 2023. Still a fixture in Key West, now as a charter fishing captain, his stories of Buffett, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison and other members of their collective Club Mandible, continue to be sought out by fans, journalists and historians as firsthand insights of the era, island and early days of the Coral Reefers.
David Wegman
David Wegman arrived in Key West in 1970 where he became an artist, sailor musician and self-proclaimed pirate who has sailed around the world. His relationship with Buffett and many of the early Coral Reefers is well documented and noted in his personal biography, David Wegman Through the Years published in 2024. Wegman and Buffett had many shared friends from Key West to St. Barths, and remains close with Buffett’s sister, Lucy, both of whom continue to reside part time in Key West. Wegman is also close friends with Kenny Chesney, who included a chapter dedicated to him in his current New York Times #1 bestselling book, Heart Life Music.
Deborah McColl
Deborah McColl was the first Coral Reeferette, which is what the band’s back-up singers are called. They met in the mid-70s, and she was in the band from 1978 to 1982 when she was let go due to being a self-proclaimed “problem child” due to hard partying. She then attended graduate school and became a psychotherapist and marriage counselor where she built a private practice in South Pasadena, CA. Music was still in her heart though, and she released an album in 2000 called Naked in the Garden.
Greg “Fingers” Taylor
Greg “Fingers” Taylor was a student at the University of Southern Mississippi where he met Buffett who was performing at a small show in the student union. Taylor asked to join the performer on stage where his unique, bold and impassioned harmonica playing made a huge impression on Buffett. Jimmy couldn’t yet afford a band, but he immediately invited him to play on gigs and ultimately albums starting in 1974. Known as “Fingers” due to his skill as a piano player, Taylor’s ability to command the stage with his bluesy harmonica jams helped to define the Coral Reefer’s sound for decades to follow. After a lifetime of hard partying, zealous playing and renowned performing, Fingers passed away due to complications from Alzheimer’s Disease in 2023.
Josh Leo
Josh Leo first met Buffett and the band in the late 70’s while playing guitar and touring with J.D. Souther. When Buffett asked Josh to join the Coral Reefers in the early 80’s, Josh was reticent due to the hard partying lifestyle of the first Coral Reefers. Buffett then asked Josh to help him find a new band. Leo was instrumental in facilitating the transition from the original band members to the next players, all of whom came from major bands like the Eagles and Little Feat. Leo went on to become the Head of A&R at RCA records, where amongst his many accomplishments, he discovered and signed Martina McBride. He has also written and produced dozens of albums and hit songs with some of the industry’s top performers.
Keith Sykes
Keith Sykes is a successful singer-songwriter who first met Buffett in Key West in 1972. The Memphis-based musician wrote some of Buffett’s most successful songs, including the Coast of Marseilles, which was included on the album Son of a Son of a Sailor in 1978 and Volcano, where he joined the band during the recording sessions at Air Studios on Monserrat. He co-wrote the title track for the album with Buffett. Sykes has also written songs for John Prine, Roseann Cash, Jerry Jeff Walker, The Judds and George Thorogood. Sykes has also produced numerous albums and was credited for discovering Todd Snider. His autobiography, A Very Short Time was published in 2024.
Kenny Chesney
Kenny Chesney has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and was recently inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His book, Life Love Music is the current #1 New York Times bestseller. Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, Chesney credits Buffett as one of his main inspirations to become a musician and he unabashedly proclaims his fondness for the Coral Reefer’s music. He collaborated with Buffett on a remake of Hank Williams’s single, Hey Goodlookin’ and has also covered some of Buffett’s music. When Buffett was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, it was Chesney, along with Mac McAnally and James Taylor who performed on his behalf.
Mac McAnally
Mac McAnally was a session player in Muscle Shoals as a teenager and cut his first hit single, It’s a Crazy World in 1977 before he turned twenty years old. Buffett sought him out at that time, given their shared Mississippi roots, and they began a friendship that continued the rest of their lives. Buffett recorded Mac’s song, It’s My Job, in 1982 on his Coconut Telegraph album, and Mac sang back-up on the single. McAnally has written multiple #1 hit songs and has been named the Country Music Association’s Musician of the Year a record ten times. He became a full-time Coral Reefer in 1994 and has continued to play with the band ever since, including after Buffett’s passing and during the Coral Reefers tours in 2025 and 2026.
Michael Utley
Michael Utley was a session player at Jerry Wexler’s Criteria Studios in Miami and at the Glazer Brothers Studio in Nashville where he first met Buffett. He has played on every single Jimmy Buffett album, was the musical director for the Coral Reefers and producer of many of the albums. Prior to joining Buffett full time in 1975, he toured with Rita Coolidge and Kris Kristoffersen. As a session player, he was on albums by many other successful performers, including the Allman Brothers, Jerry Jeff Walker and Aretha Franklin. Upon Buffett’s death, Utley retired to Venice Beach, CA, and his son, Mick, took over as the keyboardist for the Coral Reefer Band.
Nadirah Shakoor
Nadirah Shakoor has been a Reeferette since 1995, singing harmony and backing vocals. Prior to joining the Coral Reefer Band she was a part of Arrested Development and toured with Madonna, Al Jarreau, Paula Abdul, Quincy Jones and others. Along with Arrested Development, she was nominated for a Grammy in 1994. Shakoor has also enjoyed a solo career and has recorded an album on Buffett’s Mailboat Records label. She continues to tour with the Coral Reefers today.
Norbert Putnam
Norbert Putnam was one of the original studio house band members in Muscle Shoals, where starting as a teenager, he played on albums by Roy Orbison, Henry Mancini, Dan Fogelberg, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, and many others, As a bassist, he also played on over 100 of Elvis Presely’s songs. In 1971 he started producing and was a part owner in Quadraphonic Sound studio (Quad) in Nashville. He first met Buffett in 1970 when Jimmy was a journalist for Billboard Magazine and sought an interview with Jerry Jeff Walker at Quad. That introduction led Buffett to Key West with Walker, which was pivotal in the singer discovering the sound that would lead him to success. Life came full circle when Buffett’s manager asked Putnam to produce an album with Jimmy’s band when his previous producer rejected the idea. Putnam suggested to Buffett that he include indigenous instruments of the Caribbean on the album, which Buffett initially rejected, but later agreed to. That first of five albums that Putnam produced for Buffett was Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes which included Margaritaville. The last album he produced for Buffett was Somewhere Over China in 1982, which coincided with the termination of the first Coral Reefers.
Roger Bartlett
Roger Bartlett is arguably the “first Coral Reefer.” While others, like Fingers Taylor and Vaughn Cochran played gigs with Buffett before that, none toured with him. In 1974, Roger was a guitar player in another band when he first met Jimmy at the Exit/In in Nashville. When they next crossed paths in Austin, Texas, Roger suggested Buffett needed a guitar player. They subsequently toured together cross-country for the next year until their growing success led them both to recruit other members and form the full Coral Reefer Band. Life on the road for the upstart, hard-partying band took its toll on Bartlett, and he quit the band to Jimmy’s amazement in 1977. Buffett gave him a Rolex for his service and called him back to help in the studio on the Changes in Latitudes album and for some other gigs in New York City where Bartlett had moved to. Bartlett is also the composer for the original music in this documentary.
Steven Taylor
Steven Taylor is the son of Greg “Fingers” Taylor. A musician himself, Steven is a blues guitarist with multiple albums to his credit. One of his songs, You’ll Live On, is featured at the end of the documentary, and features harmonica music of his fathers that was recorded before his death.
Vaughn Cochran
Vaughn Cochran was a washboard player and artist in Key West when Buffett arrived in 1970. They often played together and with others, including Jerry Jeff Walker at local bars like the Chart Room, Howie’s Lounge and Crazy Ophelias. Cochran joined Buffett in New York City on their first ABC Dunhill concert, but his life as an artist was too demanding for him to continue to tour, especially given that they were unknown and underpaid. Buffett couldn’t afford a band yet anyway, but the two remained friends and saw each other periodically through the years, Cochran’s perspective and history with Buffett in the Key West years helps to provide context and accuracy. Today, Cochran is the owner of Black Fly restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida, and Black Fly-fishing Lodge in the Bahamas as well as a renowned wildlife artist.