Jimmy Buffett, an Internationally Known Troubadour Who Anchored Here, Dies at 76

As soon as Glenn Goodman and his friends pull into the dirt parking lot of Ditch Plains Beach, it’s always a race to get on the water. Clothes come off, wetsuits replace carefully wrapped towels, and their surfboards guide them into the waves.

But, more often than not, Goodman would notice one person missing: his close friend, the musician Jimmy Buffett.

Still there in the parking lot, somewhere between pulling on his wetsuit and dropping the towel, Buffett would be chatting with fans and signing autographs — happily.

“He just wouldn’t turn them away. He would always just be there, knowing everybody wants a connection, and that’s okay,” Goodman said. “He never got ornery, ever, but he’d be out in the water 30 minutes later.”

To the world, Buffett, who died on Friday, September 1, at age 76, was a legend — a singer-songwriter who embodied the spirit of “island life” with his signature blend of folk, country and Caribbean music. Best known for the iconic 1977 hit “Margaritaville,” his five-decade-long career spawned a beloved following of “Parrot Heads.”

He also was an author of fiction, nonfiction and children’s books, and an entrepreneur who parlayed his role as a troubadour into a string of successful businesses that made him a sizable fortune.

But to those who knew him on the East End, none of that particularly mattered.

To them, he was a father and a family man, a fisherman, a pilot and a surfer. He was a philanthropist with not only his means but his time and energy. He was known to play a surprise set at The Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett or The Surf Lodge in Montauk — tequila flowing, of course — and refused to define his audience.

Albeit larger than life, Buffett was approachable, genuine and focused, with a healthy sense of humor. Intelligent, cultured and heartfelt, he created deliberately and with vision. He loved his fans, Goodman said, and they loved him right back.

“He was also a down-to-earth guy with an incredible lust for life, work ethic and positive routine that he practiced up to the very end,” artist Dan Rizzie said. “Being his friend was an honor and privilege I will always carry close to my heart. The void he leaves behind to the millions who loved him is incomprehensible.”

Buffett died of Merkel cell skin cancer ­— a rare and aggressive form that he had been fighting for four years — surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs at his home in Sag Harbor, according to a statement on his official website.

“I’m smiling through the tears,” musician Nancy Atlas said. “Jimmy was a special soul whose generosity of spirit will be remembered in tandem with his legendary music.”

Born on Christmas Day in 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, James William Buffett was, as he described himself in a popular song, a “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” introduced to life on the water by his grandfather. He and his band, The Coral Reefers, recorded their first album, “Down to Earth,” in 1970 — and it wasn’t long after that Goodman met him for the first time.

The Sag Harbor-based chiropractor was in graduate school at the University of Florida when the musician came to the area to play a concert. Afterward, Goodman bumped into him at a Mexican restaurant, only to find him whipping up tacos in the kitchen.

“I walked up to him and said, ‘Hey, Jimmy, loved your show. I’m a real big fan, but I’ve gotta admit, you look much bigger and taller on the album cover,’” Goodman recalled. “And he reaches out his hand and shakes my hand and he looks up at me — because I’m quite a bit taller than he, many people are — and he says, ‘That’s all there is.’”

Decades later, their paths would cross again — this time in Montauk, for what became an impromptu surf session and resulting breakfast outing — and a true friendship was born, one that spanned 20 years.

“It’s real,” Goodman said. “It’s quiet time in the water together, it’s talking about song lyrics and song ideas out in the water together. Living life is always better when you’re floating, we know that. It’s always better when you’re getting your head wet. It’s something that he had to be on, in, under, near the water. As much as he loved to fly — we’ve done some flying together to Block Island, British Virgin Islands — it was always water, water, water.”

Over the weekend, thousands of “Parrot Heads” flocked to Key West for a parade that honored their prolific hero — who recorded 29 studio albums alone — and bid farewell. Fans gathered at Jones Beach to listen to the musician’s songs and remember his many concerts there.

And here, overhead Barcelona Neck, an airplane wrote “Jimmy B RIP” across the sky, said Tracy Mitchell, executive director of Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“I was one of those people that cried at a number of his songs,” she said, “and I just think it’s because he’s so genuine, and I don’t think there’s anything greater than that: a guy who could write such incredible music and, at the same time, be as genuine as he was — is — wherever he’s landed in life.”

In March 2020, Mitchell received a call from Buffett, who asked to visit her at the theater. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she recalled, and he said he wanted to help first responders somehow. First, he suggested a concert, but until they could play live, he agreed to help virtually by donating a signed guitar to raise money for Bay Street artists.

A year passed. One cold winter day, as Mitchell left the still-empty theater — with just the ghost light shining — she spotted a bundled-up man looking at the signs on the Bay Street patio.

“He goes, ‘Tracy, is that you?’ and he takes down his sunglasses, and I go, ‘Jimmy, is that you?’” she said. “And he gave me this big-ass hug. It was just such a rough time and he gave me that hug and I thought, ‘This guy just gets it.’ He was never my best friend or anything like that — so many musicians and everybody in town know him — but he just was a mensch.”

With all of his international success, Buffett poured himself back into his local community, where he also owned a home in Montauk Shores. In July 2019, he helped the Village of North Haven celebrate the opening of an expanded pirate playground with an impromptu sing-along at the North Haven Village Hall. He could be counted on to perform shows big and small to benefit local causes, and his love of sailing manifested on local waters and waterfronts, where he was seen as just another local.

“We got the opportunity to be just so intimate and close with this legend, but he’s just so real and loving,” Goodman said. “He is more than the image. He’s just a friend. He’s a buddy. He’s a water man, who has brought so much joy.”

In August 2021, Buffett performed “Hey, That’s My Wave” during a concert at Jones Beach Theater — a tune that he and Goodman co-wrote — and three years prior, he brought Atlas on stage for a duet of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” during his encore.

“I have never, in my life, experienced an artistic kindness the likes of when he invited me to sit in at Jones Beach,” she said. “The man could have asked anyone on Earth to come down and picked a scrappy singer-songwriter from Montauk to shine a light on. That says everything you need to know on who he is as a person and an artist.”

This past summer, Buffett appeared in Sag Harbor’s WLNG studios to debut a new song, “My Gummy Just Kicked In,” on “Lunch on the Deck” with Bill Evans and Jessica Ambrose, calling it his “hometown radio station.” When Judy Carmichael had the musician on her NPR show, “Jazz Inspired,” in May 2022, he was fully into the conversation, she said, and found him to be inspiring.

“I can tell you here that he was a delight, loaded with life,” she said. “I now realize that he had cancer when he was on my show, since he’d been dealing with that for a few years, and you never would have known it. All the comments that he lived life to the fullest were exactly my experience of him.”

Buffett is survived by his wife of 46 years, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett; two daughters, Savannah and Sarah; a son, Cameron; two sisters, Laurie Buffett McGuane and Lucy Buffett; his numerous grandchildren, cousins, nieces, and nephews; and a devoted pack of dogs — Lola, Kingston, Pepper, Rosie, Ajax and Kody.

The musician was expected to release his new album, “Equal Strain On All Parts,” later this year, which would serve as the follow-up to his 2020 project, “Life On The Flip Side,” but Goodman said it is now unclear when that date will be. But shortly after Buffett’s death, radio stations aired a previously unreleased single, “Bubbles Up,” a term that reminds people in trouble — whether they’re surfing or diving in tumultuous water — that bubbles will lead to safety.

The chorus goes: “Bubbles up/They will point you towards home/No matter how deep or how far you roam/They will show you the surface, the plot and the purpose/So when the journey gets long/Just know that you are loved, there is light up above/And the joy is always enough/Bubbles up.”

Goodman first heard the song about a month and a half ago, he said. “I sat there crying, right in front of him,” he said. “He just laughed and said, ‘I love it.’ When we were in the studio just a month ago, he said, ‘Glenn, I listened to the album lying in bed last night, and I’ve gotta admit, it made me cry, too.’”

On Sunday, Goodman spent three solid hours in the surf — a distraction from loss, a celebration of his friend. Most mornings, he got a text or phone call from Buffett, asking what they were doing that day, surfing, or sailing, or just talking about life and music.

It never came on Monday. And Goodman woke up in tears.

“He’s riding some really magnificent waves,” he said, his voice hitching. “I know that.”