USM to honor Buffett, Fingers Taylor

Billy Watkins | Clarion Ledger

The first brick of Jimmy Buffett’s empire began with a couple of simple lines: “Nibblin’ on sponge cake/watching the sun bake/all of those tourists covered with oil.”

“Yep, simple,” agreed Norbert Putnam, who produced the 1977 song where those lyrics reside — “Margaritaville.”

“But you listen to those lines, and they're like a video. They paint a picture. That’s what Buffett did. He wrote simple, brilliant lines that painted pictures of places people wanted to go. He built a fantasy place. I always picture a guy working in Chicago on the 47th floor in some insurance office, sitting in his cubicle, listening to Buffett and saying, ‘Someday … someday I’m going to live like Jimmy Buffett.'”

Buffett’s business, Margaritaville Enterprises, has made him the fourth-richest lead singer in the world, according to Celebrity Net Worth. His net worth: $400 million.

But before all of that, he was a student in the late 1960s at the University of Southern Mississippi, on his way to earning a degree in history. He would entertain students on the steps of The Hub, the on-campus student center.

That is where he met Greg “Fingers” Taylor, a harmonica player from Jackson who also was attending USM at the time.

They immediately bonded musically. They began touring together, just the two of them. Taylor was a key member of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band from 1974 to 2001 and also toured with countless stars such as James Taylor and Gregg Allman.

On Saturday at 10 a.m., before USM’s football game with Old Dominion, USM officials will unveil a bronze marker, recognizing the historical significance of that meeting.

Neither musician will be able to attend. Buffett will be represented by Phillip LeMere, president of Kappa Sigma fraternity, which Buffet joined at USM. Taylor will be represented by his second cousin, Harrison Cunningham.

USM historian Chester “Bo” Morgan said in a release: “It’s only fitting we recognize the legacies of Buffett and Taylor, whose contributions to American popular music are indeed significant.”

“Fingers was by far the greatest harmonica player I ever worked with,” said Putnam, a longtime session musician in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Nashville who also produced Dan Fogelberg, Joan Baez and the Flying Burrito Brothers. “Now, he wasn’t a morning person. We would record some stuff in the morning, and then Fingers would come in later that day and add his part. I wasn’t sure how that would work, but that was before I knew how talented he was. He always nailed his part the first take.”

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Buffett, who was born in Pascagoula on Christmas Day 1946, had enjoyed success with “Come Monday” in 1974.

“It was one of those songs that was played a lot on the radio but didn’t sell a lot of copies,” Putnam said. “Don Gant had produced that record. When Jimmy got ready to record his next album, he told Don he wanted to use his own band. Don wouldn’t do it. So Jimmy called me.”

Putnam agreed to produce the record, “but Jimmy agreed to let me bring in a couple of ‘ringers’ to play in case his band couldn’t get the music down,” Putnam said. “It’s tricky business working with a band that has never been in the studio before. But he told me, ‘My band has so much more energy than you heard on ‘Come Monday.’ And he was right. First time I heard them, they sounded like the Rolling Stones.”

“Margaritaville” was one of the last songs Buffett presented to Putnam during the making of the album “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

“He would bring in whatever he wanted to record that day,” Putnam said. “And since he was going for what became known as Caribbean rock, I took him and the band to a studio in Miami. I thought being down there would help his writing. I’d done the same thing with Dan Fogelberg, taking him to the mountains of Colorado.

“He sat down one morning in the studio and started playing ‘Margaritaville’ on his acoustic guitar. He had the lyrics written out on a legal pad. Some lines were scratched out and replacement lines written above them.

“I heard those first few lyrics, and I liked them, but I really wasn’t sure where he was going with this. And the one thing most writers consider a key ingredient is conflict. Well, I soon heard the chorus.”

“Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville/Searching for my lost shaker of salt … ”

“It was perfect,” Putnam said. “I thought, ‘My gosh, this is not just a good song. It’s a great song.’ And we had that song done in about three takes. It just flowed.”

That was Buffett’s first No. 1 song but other hits followed. Among them: “Cheeseburger In Paradise,” “Pencil Thin Mustache,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere.”

And Taylor’s harmonica is present on most all of them.

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Buffett’s fans are worldwide, but there is no disputing that the center of the Margaritaville universe is based on the Gulf Coast.

“We can all relate to the life he’s talking about,” said William Griffin of Jackson. “His songs, particularly the early material, are fun and upbeat. He writes about his experiences as a teenager and living life in the South.

“And, let’s be honest. He writes about drinking beer and frozen concoctions and chasing girls and partying like crazy — which 80 percent of the people all over the world would love to do at some point in their lives. Buffett makes it about never growing up and enjoying life to the fullest.”

Said another Buffett fan, Tommy Campbell of Macon: “Ol’ Jimmy’s music kind of demonstrates why people like Robin Hood. He is a good guy who might operate out of the norm. His songs are sailing and smuggling and drinking … and sex. I mean, who doesn’t dream of being a pirate at sea?”

Contact Billy Watkins at (769) 257-3079 or bwatkins@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @BillyWatkins11 on Twitter.