The first Margaritaville was at the corner of Hwy. 59 & Fort Morgan Rd.

The first Margaritaville was at the corner of Hwy. 59 & Fort Morgan Rd.

By Fran Thompson

At least a part-time Gulf Shores resident since a summer residency at the Gulf Shores Holiday Inn in 1972, Brent Burns was named Pleasure Island’s official music ambassador by the Convention & Visitors Bureau in 2006. He’s earned 12 Trop Rock awards including Song, Entertainer and CD of the Year. He won three awards at the inaugural presentation in 2008, a special WAVE award for his humanitarian work and Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.
He will be all over the upcoming MOTM, and one of his biggest hits is titled “Living The Life Jimmy Buffett Only Wrote About.’’ But he did not meet JB until he saw him play at La Cagale in Paris a few years ago.
“Jimmy spent a lot of time in Gulf Shores in the 1970’s and 1980’s. We ran around the same bases, but I was always missing him,’’ Brent said.
“He has always been part of the fabric down here. When I moved here, I was disillusioned with Nashville. I had writer’s block. I had just gotten divorced and I moved to the beach to try to figure things out and decide if I wanted to get back in the game.
“What I learned from watching Buffett was that I didn’t have to chase the juke box. I could just play what I know. If you write good songs, people will find you. It worked out pretty good for me and it was kind of his inspiration that led me to take that path. He inspired me more than I realized at the time.’’
The MOTM Board decided to move its gathering to Gulf Shores after 20 years in Key West because it is more centrally located, less expensive, just as beautifully tropical and provides more infrastructure for future growth.
It’s a good fit. The Al. Gulf Coast is also every bit as much a part of Buffett’s DNA as Key West will ever be.
Buffett projected inclusiveness, generosity and adventure. He made it clear that fun is fair. He became an international musical icon while doing so while never failing to acknowledge the quartz granules and rolling surf that helped shape him.
One of his biggest shows ever was a free 2010 concert at Gulf Shores Public Beach paid for with BP oil spill fines.
Born up the road in Pascagoula, Buffett grew up in Mobile. His mother (Mary) inspired his love for literature and his father (James) and grandfather his love for the sea. He was an alter boy at St. Ignatius and graduated in 1964 from McGill.
“I’ve got some fond memories and some not-so-fond memories there,” Buffett told al.com about his time at McGill.
Like most males, he started playing guitar to meet girls. He honed his craft playing gigs at the Admiral Semmes Hotel in downtown Mobile.
Buffett matriculated for a short period at Auburn, and then attended Pearl River Community College. By the time he graduated from Southern Miss in 1969 as a history-journalism major, he was already playing in French Quarter bands and busking on Bourbon St.
Buffett’s direct connection to Pleasure isle also includes a song (Bama Breeze) about the famous honky tonk on the state line. Darrell Roberts, Lea Anne Creswell and J Hawkins are the three early Flora-Bama possible-probables still playing gigs at the Flora-Bama. They remember him.
Creswell said she loved it when Buffett told the ‘Bama audience not to bother shouting out requests, as he was going to play what he felt like playing.
Hawkins said he was on a break around 1982 when he saw someone pick up his guitar on the main room stage.
“I was about to go in and kick somebody’s a@#, but by the time I got to the stage I saw who it was,’’ Hawkins said. “It was not unusual to see him in there. He’d pop in periodically and just sit down and enjoy the music. It wasn’t any big deal.’’
“I remember him coming into the Flora-Bama, but I don’t ever remember him getting up and playing,’’ Roberts said. “A lot of times Jimmy would be there by himself. The last time I saw him he was eating gumbo at The Point.’’
Buffett’s first book, Greetings From Margaritaville, was set on Perdido Key. Written in 1989, it was the first of his three best selling books.
Buffett made some noise with the song Come Monday from Living and Dying in 3/4 Time album in 1974, but everything changed in 1977 with Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.
The album included the most requested song ever on Pleasure Island – and maybe America. And the first incarnation of what would become a worldwide brand, started right here in Gulf Shores.
His only top 10 single, Margaritaville was a 22 week mainstay on the Billboard chart.
“It was like a vacation to listen to that song,’’ said James Taylor in Rolling Stone. “But at the same time, it exposed itself and gave you a hint of the dirty underside – the hangover.’’
Margaritaville was accepted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance and helped brand Key West as an international destination resort.
“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett told the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”
The copyright on that song inspired a business empire that grew to include a Broadway play, casinos, retirement communities and hotels, a radio station, clothing and apparel lines, food, beer, tequila, salad dressings and even salsa. Forbes placed Buffett’s net worth at $1 billion when he passed.
But before the retail store in Key West in 1985, the Margaritaville restaurant in that same hamlet in 1987, and a second restaurant in New Orleans in 1993, there was J.B’s Margaritaville in Gulf Shores.
Buffett confirmed that fact from the stage at that 2010 BP Concert at Gulf Shores Public Beach.
“We’re coming home in a lot of ways here. A lot of people don’t know, if you study your history – it’s not even in Wikipedia – that the actual first Margaritaville was in Gulf Shores, Alabama before it was in Key West, Florida,’’ Buffett said.
“Let’s just say we didn’t do as good here as we did eventually, but it was a learning process. Thank you everybody. You can put that up on Wikipedia or you can take it and throw it in the Gulf. I don’t care.’’
A story in the Tuscaloosa News from June 19, 1984 states that Buffett was in Gulf Shores to shoot an album cover, visit his parents, go to a wedding reception for NFL quarterback Kenny Stabler in Mobile and help his friend, the late Dan Sweet, open the club located at the corner of Hwy. 59 and Fort Morgan Rd. (There is a Walgreen’s there now).
“I tried to franchise a club under the Margaritaville name in Florida. But I couldn’t get trademark rights because there are so many using the name around the country,’’ Buffett told the Tuscaloosa News. “A friend, Dan Sweet, talked to me about doing it in Gulf Shores and it got me interested because I wanted to come back home.’’
Although he knew Jimmy’s sisters Laurie and Lucy since their high school days in Mobile, Sweet did not befriend Buffett until the early 1970’s.
“Jimmy played at the Admiral Sims Hotel all the time,’’ Sweet said. “He was just a nice guy and way smarter than you would have guessed. He already knew what he was doing.’’
Sweet said he grew closer to Buffett in 1977 when he helped Jack West build the legendary Judge Roy Bean in Daphne (It burned to the ground in 2005).
“His parents lived down the street. So, Jimmy would come down when he was in town,’’ Sweet said. “He was a regular and fun to be with. He was smart. He always got to the punch line early.’’
Sweet called Buffett and said he had a chance to buy Sam & Shine’s in Gulf Shores and wanted to name it Margaritaville. Buffett gave him no assurances at the time, but he called back a little later and said he talked to his attorneys and it could open up as J.B.’s Margaritaville.
At the time, Buffett’s lawyers were in litigation with two different bistros doing business as Margaritavilles in South Florida, Sweet said.
“He said put the initials J.B. in front of it and we could do it. His lawyers said it would help with the litigation if he also had a place with the name,’’ Sweet said.
Buffett made several trips to Gulf Shores to check out the building, which included a fireplace and a huge patio, and he was definitely involved with the bistro’s set-up and atmosphere. Buffett insisted that six ounce bottles of coke be used for all the mixed drinks. Almost the entire Coral Reefer band played at the grand opening, according to the owner.
“He liked the way it looked, and his suggestions were always the right move,’’ Sweet said.
J.B.’s Margaritaville had its moments, especially in the summer and when bigger acts played there. But Sweet was not prepared for the winter season.
He said he knew business would slow down in the winter, but he did not know it would be non-existant. That and four hurricane evacuations in the summer of 1985 were the original Margaritaville’s Waterloo.
Sweet said Coral Reefer guitarist Mac McAnally, a frequent performer at the club, played at the grand opening for a putt-putt golf course he put in the courtyard, but that addition was not nearly enough to combat the lack of business in the winter, and the club closed after three years in business.
“For the next 30 years Jimmy would say that I owed him money, which, of course, I didn’t,’’ Sweet said. “He expected it to do a lot better and I did too. But I just didn’t factor in the winter. Anyway, I would still see him around at The Bean.
“He was a nice guy, a great guy, and very influential in the world,’’ Sweet added. “I was lucky to have been involved with him in even a small way. You couldn’t have much more fun than you did with Jimmy.’’
Mark Calamette was bartending at Adolph’s at Gulf Shores Public Beach when Sweet was a manager there. His Buffett bonafides are many, and include a story we won’t repeat for publication that ended up with both he and Buffett crashing on sofas in Sweet’s West Beach living room in Gulf Shores.
Calamette bought Buffett’s now famous 1963 Falcon from him, and Buffett gave him the original screenplay for the Margaritaville movie written by PJ O’Rourke that was never made. The script includes Buffett’s notes in the margins.
“That Margaritaville was a little piece of history, especially with Buffett being able to bring it to his attorneys to use to get the attention of the court to tell the other bar owners to cease and desist,’’ Calamette said. “The Margaritaville name was his and he was open.”
Buffett always retained the essence of what it means to be from Lower Alabama. That is, to have New Orleans, Mobile Mardi Gras, parochial schools, the Gulf and good gumbo be part of your culture. Celebrating all that with Buffett as a soundtrack has since become part of our culture.
“I guess I psuedo opened for Jimmy Buffett,’’ said another Mobile raised musician, Wes Loper, who played the inside stage before Freddy And The Fishsticks at Lulu’s at Homeport Marina the day that Hurricane Alex forced postponement of Buffett’s 2010 concert on Gulf Shores Public Beach.
Loper also once lent Buffett his guitar to play for his mother at LuLu’s first local restaurant on Weeks Bay.
“I never considered myself a trop rocker. But I like to keep it fun and I sing about life on the water. I don’t know anything that I could say about Jimmy that has not already been said or that he has not already written in his own songs,” Loper said.
Johnny Barbato, another musician from Mobile, saw him play with 25 other people one night at LuLu’s on Weeks Bay.
“When Buffett started playing, it was like there was a halo over his head. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. And I saw it clear as day,’’ Barbato said.
“He was using some kind of rented 12’s (speakers) and he had no monitor. It just blew my mind. It grabbed me so much that I went to his concert a few weeks later in Biloxi and he did the same thing to 20,000 people that he did to 20. The dude was that special. There are very few people that can sit down and just be themselves like that.’’
“You can’t grow up around water and not develop an almost cellular longing to be out in a boat on that water. So many of his songs resonate with his love of exploring the ocean,’’ Buffett’s sister Lucy told AL.com. “That notion was born in his youth on Mobile Bay, Dauphin Island, Gulf Shores and the Mississippi barrier islands.”
Buffet allowed us to grow older while refusing to grow up. And he did all that just by being himself, a child of the Alabama Gulf Coast who learned how to play guitar.
“It’s pure escapism is all it is,’’ he said. “I’m not the first one to do it, nor shall I probably be the last. But I think it’s really a part of the human condition that you’ve got to have some fun. You’ve got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I try to make it at least 50/50 fun to work and so far it’s worked out.”
Sweet Baby himself, the great James Taylor put it this way: “The main thing he shared with us was his joy of being alive. It was delightful to witness that life. He had an immense amount of positive energy.’’