Jimmy Buffett, who has died aged 76, was an American singer-songwriter whose country-tinged soft rock celebrated the laid-back culture of the Florida Keys on the Caribbean coast of the US. Sometimes known as the “tropical troubadour”, his songs often featured the voices of characters who appreciated the aimless pleasures of beach life: smoking weed, drinking rum and eating boiled shrimps, messing around in boats and generally watching the world go by.
It was a lifestyle led by Buffett himself for a number of years before he became a successful musician and businessman, and was notably portrayed in his most popular composition, Margaritaville, about a drifter who sits around strumming his guitar on the front porch, doing little more than watching the passers-by and – highlight of a long summer – getting himself a tattoo.
