Jimmy Buffett - A Good Life All the Way by Ryan White: book review

Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way (2017) is the biography of American singer James Wiliam Buffett (1946-).

The biography describes Buffett’s early years in Mobile, Alabama. He was singing at anti-Vietnam rallies in his fringed jacket in Nashville, but he wasn’t really writing country music. ‘’He was, as he said, trying to make people think.’’

As soon as he arrived in tropical Florida at the end of 1971 – the place where Hemingway went to ‘’write and fish and drink’’ – Buffett changed into colourful beach shirts and shorts, found his place in the world, and sang another tune. A bar tune, a beach tune, an island, an escape tune – all of which made him a star. From bar singer, to touring with the Coral Reefer Band, the rest is history. His breakaway song was Margaritaville in 1977, the summer of Star Wars the movie and the Eagle’s hit song Hotel California.

Afterwards he released seven albums in six years with only one top ten single, but he was still known as the Man from Margaritaville. He was ‘’without a genre.’’ The remainder of the biography tells how Buffet became a successful businessman in a range of spin-off ventures from beer to beach resorts to baseball, and finishes in 2015, before Buffett’s latest 2016 album release.

White’s lead-in is long and slow, and there is a lot of superfluous information, but things pick up when you realize it’s more about the development of songs that show the development of the man that Buffet had become (‘’the Mark Twain of Southern Music’’) – or always was, just not in Nashville. It’s also an historical account of the music and musicians of the times, so this is a treat for music history buffs.

The biography adds photographs by White and others, but it is evident that the author is not a professional photographer. Nevertheless, some are okay.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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