April 30, 2021 —– Chart #89
Hello Musical Friends,
Welcome to Friday and the 89th edition of Chart of the Day. I can’t help it if I am a Parrothead, but I just love Jimmy Buffett. So today I am going back to the well, a great 1977 album. Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes is the seventh studio album by American popular music singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. This is his breakthrough 1977 album, which remains the best-selling studio album of Buffett’s career, and contains his biggest single, “Margaritaville”. Today’s selection is In The Shelter.
Changes was very popular and critically well-received and was a transitional album on several levels for Buffett. In a commercial sense, it ushered in Buffett’s greatest period of chart and airplay popularity – changing him from an FM cult favorite and minor hitmaker to a top-draw touring artist whose albums sold in the millions, receiving regular AM airplay at the time. Changes would be followed by equally popular and more grandiose expressions of Buffett’s “Caribbean Soul” on Son of a Son of a Sailor (1978) and Volcano (1979). All of these albums would combine pop, bar-band rock, country, folk, and reggae influences with the professional production of Norbert Putnam.
Changes also represented the beginning of the end of the “Key West Albums”: the Don Gant-produced A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973), Living & Dying in 3/4 Time (1974), A1A (1974), and Havaña Daydreamin’ (1976). These four albums capture the feel of the early 1970s Key West, Florida and Buffett’s experiences as a struggling musician and storyteller. Although the albums are not exclusively about Key West, they detail the laid back island ethos of the small island city and its pre-“condo commando” status as an American Casablanca … a place where no one knows your name and would not care if they did. At the time, Key West was a derelict navy town looking for a direction and was filled with small bars and restaurants craving troubadours like Buffett, Steve Goodman, Jerry Jeff Walker, and others who would play for bar money. The albums document life in the Gulf of Mexico Region (“Biloxi”, “Banana Republics”, “Woman Goin’ Crazy on Caroline Street”, “Wonder Why We Ever Go Home”) with displays of touring craziness (“Miss You So Badly”). After Changes, Buffett’s scope grew to include the entire Caribbean and, later, the vast expanse of what would become “world music.” Buffett’s Key West experiences would pepper his later work (even recording his albums in Key West’s Shrimpboat Sound), but not like it did in the 1973–1977 period. It is this period, along with his 1978 and 1979 albums, that created the mythos Jimmy Buffett has parlayed into icon status as a performer, restaurateur, entrepreneur, author, and celebrity.
Enjoy the song – close your eyes and picture yourself on a white sandy beach with clear turquoise water and your favorite adult beverage in hand. Ahhhh . . . .
A live performance performed with a reggae beat: https://youtu.be/vZ53gTnLDK8
Keep rockin’ my friends,
Stan