Just a girl who loves Jimmy Buffett and wants to share his music, stories and lifestyle with the world!
I think this song sums up not only Jimmy’s love of adventure, but also his appreciation for travel, culture, people and places far from where he grew up. The song tells us about some of his travels and uses his wonderful storytelling skills in the lyrics to paint a gorgeous picture.
Migration is defined as “movement from one part of something to another” or “seasonal movement of animals from one region to another”. While Jimmy never specifically mentions the word migration in his song lyrics, he used it for the title of his song. In the song, Jimmy does mention people who retire to Florida, and he also mentions himself in a backyard (in Key West) wondering how he ever got here. Both are certainly examples of migrations, and another lyric mentions sailing down to Martinique and establishing a new life with a parakeet, a Bogart suit and a bottle of wine. At the time of this song, this is a future migration, but one I believe hinted at Jimmy’s love of adventure and his willingness to keep migrating if it suited his soul.
Jimmy wrote so very many songs that uplifted people when they heard it. I also think there were songs that were written by others that I feel uplifted Jimmy’s spirit, most likely when he heard it, but certainly when he performed it. Brown Eyed Girl is one of those special songs.
In the Parrothead Handbook that came in the box set of Boats, Beaches, Bars and Ballads, Jimmy writes, “dolphins gliding along beneath the bow of a ship, effortlessly crossing the wake and doing flips, set off a big wave of human jealousy. If we are so smart, why can’t we do that?” That is a wonderful question. He goes on to say that he wrote the picture book version of this song along with his daughter, with the understanding that “humans can learn from animals, and that the natural world has room for all of our needs”. Of course, he means human and animal needs alike. Perhaps nature as well? I think it’s beautiful that this idea is something he felt strongly enough about to teach to his daughter. And by means of the song, and the accompanying story, he taught us as well.
Caroline Street in Key West has become so much a part of Jimmy’s musical reputation that inside the Margaritaville restaurant in Key West, is a street sign, showing Duval and Caroline. I have also wandered along Caroline Street, looking at houses and apartments, taken many pictures while enjoying the architectural charm that Key West has to offer. I, like most of Jimmy’s fans, am enamored with this song, and therefore the street that lives on in its title.
Havana is a city that shows up more than once in Jimmy’s songs. It seems like it’s either a place people are trying to leave or a place that people are trying to get to. Havana is the capital and largest city by population in Cuba, and the second largest populated city in the Caribbean. Known as La Habana in Spanish, it’s a city that’s history and architecture stir up dreams of the past and the tropics.
The inspiration for this song, as mentioned by Jimmy in his Directed By Delaney interview, was a writer named Kenneth Patchen, an American novelist and poet. He died in 1972, and it seems like Jimmy was inspired by his being a relatively unknown author who died fairly young. In fact, Patchen was sixty years old at his death and had published several books on poetry and a few novels, but he was a man who also had experimented with Jazz music as well as photography and painting. A real Renaissance type of man, and what I have found out about him could go on for days.
When Jimmy and crew wrote this song, I doubt they had eclipses on their mind, but it was on my mind when I first posted, because it was on the day of a solar eclipse. Since my original post, we experienced the continuation of the cycle and the lunar eclipse and now we have moved right out of eclipse season. But the sun is with us every day, sometimes bright and hot, sometimes muted and it feels like no heat comes from it at all, and about a million variations in between. No matter how it shines, it’s still a gift in the sky and the thing our whole little solar system rotates around, giving life to us, inspiring us.
Something I failed to mention in my initial post was to discuss what a barometer is. A barometer is a device used to measure atmospheric pressure and is helpful when determining weather forecasts. My grandparents had a barometer hanging on the wall of their farmhouse, and it might still be there, alongside an old mercury thermometer, still determining conditions. And I grew up on a farm, listening to more weather reports than a human could possibly ever need to know, so the idea of a barometer or barometric pressure feels like my old friend. I have yet to put one in a pot of soup, though…
Guitars come in all shapes and sizes, and string combinations as well, but the most common would be a six-string guitar, which Jimmy was referencing in this song. Six strings, tuned to E, A, D, G, B, and E, again, elevating an octave by the top string. It seems simple, but as a human who cannot play the guitar, but has toyed with it, I know it’s not that simple at all.