Earlier than Jimmy Buffett appeared on Billboard’s charts, he was writing about different artists who did.
Buffett, who died Friday (Sept. 1) at age 76, labored as a Nashville reporter for Billboard from 1969 to 1970. He give up when his first album, Debut to Earth, was launched as a result of he was instructed that persevering with, can be a battle of curiosity.
Among the many live shows he reviewed was Isaac Hayes at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium, writing, “The Scorching Buttered Soul Man mixed his songs and his keyboard work on each organ and piano with a full and highly effective voice vary that created a mode [that] was actually his personal.”
In 2021, Buffett revisited his time as a reporter, telling Billboard throughout an interview that as a burgeoning artist, he couldn’t convey himself to put in writing something detrimental a few fellow performer.
“I can by no means give anyone a nasty overview as a result of I knew how laborious it was to stand up there,” he mentioned. “Now, there must be one thing poisonous that [a review] says, however I can by no means do it as a result of I knew how laborious it was. I do know performers who’re scared to loss of life to stand up there and nonetheless do it. And I’m going, “Why are you that scared to stand up there?” I imply, you need to be doing one thing else in case you get scared to go up there. It’s one of many best joys you might ever have on planet earth to me.”
The very best a part of the job was the free music. Though unbylined, Buffett believed he reviewed Elton John’s 1970 album, Tumbleweed Connection, glowingly writing, “Though that is however his second LP, Elton John’s monitor file already speaks for itself and the album is bound to be one of many largest of the brand new yr.”
Speaking to Billboard once more in 2022, Buffett recalled the fun of getting John’s album within the mail whereas writing for the journal. “Individuals had been sending me free albums as a result of I used to be the reporter for Billboard, and that album got here in a stack of data from I feel it was MCA,” he mentioned. “Once I bought [to Billboard], my editor instructed me, ‘Simply allow them to know you’re a Billboard reporter and provides them your handle they usually’ll provide you with data so hopefully you overview them otherwise you’ll say one thing about them.’ So I went ‘free albums? No sh—!’”
He additionally wrote of his time at Billboard in his 1998 autobiography, A Pirate Appears at Fifty, calling it “the one actual job I might have in my grownup life.”
From the primary day, he was wined and dined as he traveled along with his boss, Invoice Williams. “In twenty-four hours, I had gone from simply one other no person songwriter who couldn’t get his foot right into a music writer’s door to the assistant Southern Editor of Billboard,” he wrote. “Hell, folks took me to lunch. I had enterprise playing cards. I flew to New York for editorial conferences. I had an expense account. I had a WATTS line at work on which I known as all my associates after working hours, and I bought free albums from the file firms. Not unhealthy for an actual job.”
Buffett even managed to interrupt some information, together with bluegrass titans’ Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’ cut up.
After switching from overlaying nation music to pop, Buffett interviewed Otis Redding and James Brown, reviewed Led Zeppelin on the Palladium, and discovered a bit concerning the significance of caring for enterprise. “What I primarily noticed had been numerous splendidly gifted artists and writers who let someone else fear about ‘all that stuff,’ and I noticed the difficulty it bought them into,” he wrote within the e-book.
Billboard threw Buffett a going away get together when his album got here out, gifting him a guitar case. Despite the fact that that chapter of his life was over, it’s clear his time at Billboard remained a treasured reminiscence and set him on his method: “One of many true joys of my later success was going again and sharing it with Invoice,” he wrote within the autobiography. “He was as proud as a father or mother once I lastly broke out.”
