Jimmy Buffett's Nashville country legacy: From the EXIT/IN to 'Margaritaville' and beyond

Jimmy Buffett, the singer-songwriter-turned ubiquitous billionaire entrepreneur whose death at age 76 was reported Saturday morning, leaves a deep legacy in Nashville.

Yes, in Nashville -- or anywhere by land, sea, or even airport -- there are 9 different types of retail, resort, or vacation establishments attached to his name. One needs only to walk the six-block expanse from Buffett's "Margaritaville" bar on Lower Broadway to his recently-opened "Margaritaville" hotel just south of Lower Broadway showcase to understand the power of his empire.

But his influence on country music is far more significant.

A significant portion of the superstar aesthetic of 90s country icons turned entrepreneurs, including both Kenny Chesney and Alan Jackson, is tied to Buffett and his catalog of hits, including 1977's "Margaritaville."

Other tunes in his eventual Key West-by way of Texas-inspired folk-calypso meets pop-rock catalog, including "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and "Come Monday" are essential. And while he may be most closely associated with seaside locales, Nashville helped shape Buffett -- and and Buffett added a lasting wrinkle to country music.

From outlaw country to the EXIT/IN

"Margaritaville," like many of the Mississippi-born native's classics, arrived after he'd worked for a decade in Music City at a time when platinum-selling artists like Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser were setting the outlaw country standard.

Buffett was also inspired by drifting Texas icons like Jerry Jeff Walker and folk-pop superstar Jim Croce.

At 24, Buffet found himself in a position far from ideal. Recently divorced, he worked occasionally as a journalist for Billboard Magazine while attempting to figure out his career after releasing an unsuccessful, socially conscious folk debut album, "Down To Earth," on Andy Williams' Barnaby Records.

That 1970 debut album sold well under 1000 copies, and Barnaby Records was not keen on releasing a sophomore collection of his music.

"I never did think they'd lost [my second album], but I couldn't really blame them [if they did]," recalled Buffett to American Songwriter in 1997.

He wasn't untalented -- rather unlucky -- as a solid guitar picker and songwriter in town.

In the introduction to the 2021-released coffee table memoir "EXIT/IN: 50 Years and Counting," Buffett decries the loss of "listening rooms" where "patrons sat and sipped coffee, beer, and wine and listened to acoustic guitar–playing performers" in Music City in the early 1970s.

He loved the area near Elliston Place, where one could find an inexpensive meal of fried chicken and coconut cream pie a short walk from EXIT/IN. The venue initially hired Buffett to open for recording artist Dianne Davidson.

Buffett is among a litany of artists across multiple genres and generations who got an early boost on the back of gigs at EXIT/IN.

Discovering success and a 'lost shaker of salt'

However, by 1973, Buffett was still not where he wanted to be creatively. Croce's sudden 1973 passing allowed Dunhill Records (Croce's label at the time of his death) to release his protege Buffett's "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean." That album was cut at Glaser's infamous "Hillbilly Central" studio on Nashville's Music Row.

The title "Grapefruit Juicy Fruit" was a top-40 easy listening chart favorite, but the college fraternity circuit favored album cut "Why Don't We Get Drunk," a bawdy eventual cult classic.

While cutting four more albums, Buffett began to frequently leave Nashville -- from where he still recorded -- and head to Key West for creative inspiration.

Busking and bar-singing while working as a longshoreman, in an area where Naval officers lived comfortably alongside hippies, melded well with his slowly evolving left-of-center take on politics and society.

Songs like 1974's top-five easy listening chart single "Come Monday" were hailed by outlets like the United Kingdom's New Musical Express as representative of a "new breed" of country music that sensed a "larger reality."

Very literal interpretations of his developing brand of lifestyle music like "A Pirate Looks at 40" and "My Head Hurts My Feet Stink and I Don't Love Jesus" are highlights of his continuing evolution.

In 1976, journalist Toby Goldstein summed up Buffett's work to date with a telling quote: "Buffett's humour follows along the lines of his album titles, as his tunes devote themselves to groupies, mothers, and quaaludes."

Released as a single from his eighth studio album "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," "Margaritaville" reflects Buffett at his most socially detached self. Five years into a back-and-forth relationship with a Nashville scene rapidly evolving past his outlaw country ways towards a cosmopolitan style, the song reflects an overheated, sweltering drunken man with a twice-broken leg blaming himself ("it's my own damn fault") for his failures.

'Margaritaville': a modern country legacy

Perhaps reflecting something of America's desire for countrified, darkly humorous anti-heroes in the era, Buffett became a lifestyle and touring-driven rock sensation. In less than a decade after the release of "Margaritaville," he'd opened a "Margaritaville" retail store and cafe in Key West.

"From an enigma of a song that I wrote on the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys to a small business brand -- ["Margaritaville"] is an only in America story," Buffett told Bloomberg in 2022.

The pinnacle of Buffett's influence on '90s country and the genre's modern evolution arrived two decades following him opening his first "Margaritaville" cafe and two weeks before Labor Day 2003.

In August of that year, Uncle Kracker's relaxing cover of Nashville favorite Dobie Gray's 1973-released "Drift Away" was a top-10 Billboard Hot 100 chart single. Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart was also dominated by Alan Jackson and Buffett‘s duet “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” and Kenny Chesney’s “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems.”

About Buffett's influence, Jackson noted in the liner notes of his 1999 album "Under The Influence" that he was “always been a big Jimmy Buffett fan."

"I like his music and that he does what he wants to do," added the "Chattahoochee" vocalist.

Five years after singing that he "[knew] how Jimmy Buffett [felt]" on his first platinum-selling single "How Forever Feels," Chesney stated in the opening monologue for the video for "No Shoes" that he's ideally comfortable where "it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or how you make your life, you’re just there, with the sun, the sand, the sea, and the locals."

A year later, Chesney and Kracker paired to double down on their success with the duet “When The Sun Goes Down.”

2005 saw Buffett follow with "License to Chill," a No. 1 country album.

'[He] loved it so much'

Award-winning country acclaim and chart success for Buffett accompanied his aesthetic's revival. “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere" won a Country Music Association award for vocal event of the year, while his version of Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’” (featuring Chesney, Jackson, Clint Black, Toby Keith and George Strait) was a top-10 country seller.

Buffett achieved chart-topping country status five years later via the Zac Brown Band collaboration “Knee Deep.”

Buffett once told the Boston Globe about the era, “It certainly has not gone unnoticed by me that I was either getting mentioned as an influence or was included in song lyrics by a lot of country singers.”

From Buffett's "Parrotheads" to Chesney's "No Shoes Nation," a Chesney quote from Billboard in 2007 summarized the commercial and social appeal borne via Buffett's creative journey to a lost shaker of salt in "Margaritaville." “When people talk about the tropical lifestyle, the beach, summer and friends, we put that out there … but we didn’t just pull it out of the air," he said.

Buffett's legacy extends from Jerry Jeff Walker and Jim Croce to Kenny Chesney and Alan Jackson, straight through to the sand in the boots of many of today's stars. Upon Walker's death in 2020, Buffett offered, in an interview with Texas Weekly, the following reflection on Walker's life.

It sums up Buffett well, too.

"He was a gypsy songman who wouldn’t have kept going and survived if he hadn’t loved it so much."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jimmy Buffett's Nashville country legacy: EXIT/IN to "Margaritaville"