Jimmy Buffett had Cape Breton connection
SYDNEY, N.S. — Jimmy Buffett’s music will always be linked to the Florida Keys, but the late “Margaritaville” singer was also inspired by his Cape Breton connection.
Buffett died Friday at age 76 after a private battle with skin cancer.
The singer’s grandfather, James Delaney Buffett Sr., was a sailor who lived in Glace Bay before laying down roots in Mobile, Ala.
While Buffett was born in Mississippi, his grandfather’s seafaring was the inspiration behind songs like “Son of a Son of a Sailor” and “The Captain and the Kid.”
“We came on one side from a seafaring family,” Buffett said in an April 2002 interview with the Mobile Register. “My grandfather, in his travels, certainly was an influence on all of us, it was one window to the world.”
According to Songfacts, “Son of a Son of a Sailor” was the only song Buffett performed in his lone “Saturday Night Live” appearance.
Buffett said he wrote it after seeing a picture of his grandfather, who died in 1970, after he’d returned from a trip to Nova Scotia.
“He was born there but left when he was a young man and didn’t return until he was 84,” Buffett said of his grandfather. “He was standing on dock staring at an old sailing schooner, and the look on his face told the story of where he had come from and where he had been.
“I have always been very proud of my heritage as a sailor and wrote this for the men who taught me the skills.”
