Jimmy Buffett has created a musical style and genre all his own, stemming from his image and persona as an easy going beach bum in flip-flops and board shorts...Jimmy has created a very unique sound that does not easily fit into any musical category, other than his own...Jimmy's music is island music, mixed with country, and some soul, added in some reggae, a little bit of beach boys, a little bit of blues, part folk music, mixed with lots of rock-n-roll, and some western...Jimmy's lyrics are often about the laid-back lifestyle of living easy on a tropical beach, listening to the ocean waves, drinking a cold fruity cocktail, smelling the salt air, feeling the sea breeze, chilling under the palm trees, surfing though life's joys...just simply enjoying life to its fullest...
Jimmy's loyal followers call themselves "Parrotheads"...they go to his concerts dressed in colorful Hawaiian shirts, leis around their necks, sunglasses, shorts, flip flops, grass skirts, and often wear crazy hats with parrots adorned on them....
Jimmy began his musical career in Nashville, Tennessee during the late 1960s as a country artist and recorded his first album, the folk rock Down to Earth, in 1970. During this time, Buffett could be frequently found busking for tourists in New Orleans. Country music singer Jerry Jeff Walker took him to Key West on a busking expedition in November 1971, jimmy then moved to Key West and began establishing the easy-going beach-bum persona for which he is known. He started out playing for drinks at the Chart Room Bar in the Pier House Motel. Following this move, Buffett combined country, rock, folk, and pop music with coastal as well as tropical lyrical themes for a sound sometimes called "Gulf and Western".
Jimmy Buffett began calling his music "drunken Caribbean rock 'n' roll" as he says on his 1978 live album You Had To Be There. Later, Jimmy himself and others have used the term "Gulf and Western" to describe his musical style and that of other similar-sounding performers. The name derives from elements in Buffett's early music including musical influence from country, along with lyrical themes from the Gulf Coast, and instruments such as steel drums from the Islands of the Caribbean. A music critic described Buffett's music as a combination of "tropical languor with country funkiness into what some have called the Key West sound, or Gulf-and-western." The term is a play on the form of "Country & Western"
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