Jimmy Buffett, the musician and mogul whose easy-breezy hit "Margaritaville" became a way of life for legions of devoted Parrotheads, has died. He was 76.
The singer-songwriter, whose new album Equal Strain on All Parts was due to be released later this year,
died with his family and friends around him, a statement posted on his social media and website on Saturday confirmed.
“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,
" the statement — which was accompanied by a touching photograph of Buffett sitting on a boat —read. "He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many."
Buffett was forced to reschedule a concert in May after he was hospitalized in Boston "to address some issues that needed immediate attention," he told fans in a statement shared to Twitter.
"Growing old is not for sissies, I promise you," he said. " I also will promise you, that when I am well enough to perform, that is what I'll be doing in the land of She-Crab soup.
You all make my life more meaningful and fulfilled than I would have ever imagined as a [tow] headed little boy sitting on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico."
Buffett, who is survived by wife Jane and kids Savannah, Sarah and Cameron, was born on Christmas Day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised partially in Alabama.
He developed a love of musical theater as a young boy thanks to his mom Mary, who spent her time off from the shipyard with the Mobile Theatre Guild in Alabama.
"She would always be in productions, and she would take me to the shows when they'd come through town,"
he told Entertainment Weekly in 2018, the same year his own jukebox musical, Escape to Margaritaville, opened on Broadway.
After graduating from college with a history degree, Buffett worked briefly as a writer for Billboard magazine, and also spent several years working on a fishing boat.