This week’s request came in from Alan Dorman who said, “Hi John (sic), I heard a great song on Radio Two a few weeks ago which I’d never heard before and can’t believe anyone could write a catchy song about a cheeseburger. Any ideas what the origins of this song are?” Well, Alan, many songs have been written about or mentioning food items, but a burger is quite a rare one. In 1986, George Clinton asked, Do Fries Go with That Shake, but that’s about as close as I can get. so, come on, strap in and we’ll head to the nearest diner.

The song was recorded by the appropriately named country singer Jimmy Buffett which was his real name and he was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on Christmas Day, 1946. his family relocated to Mobile in Alabama, where Buffett spent most of his childhood. At school he learned guitar and trombone and it was only after seeing a folk band play in Mississippi he decided on a career in music. His grandfather was a former sailor, Mobile is a port city and Buffett came to love the sea surroundings. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Southern Mississippi. In 1970, he recorded his first album, Down to Earth, and included on it was a track called The Captain and the Kid which he wrote in honour of his grandfather.

In the late 60s, Buffett moved again, this time to Nashville and became a correspondent for Billboard magazine. He also tried to get into the country music scene but wasn’t succeeding so moved, yet again, now to Key West in Florida. Buffett, like hundreds of country musicians, never found success in the UK, but in 1977, his song Margaritaville and, two years later, Volcano got very limited airplay. On these shores he is probably best known for the song It’s Five O’clock Somewhere, a duet with Alan Jackson. He was a very astute businessman – in 1985, he launched his first business venture, a chain of restaurants called Margaritaville. They have branches in Australia, Canada, Mexico and premises on six different Caribbean islands. In 2002, he teamed up with Outback Steakhouse and launched another chain of restaurants, beginning in Indiana which he named after his song Cheeseburger in Paradise.

Jimmy Buffett has a huge fan base and they are known as Parrot Heads, a term given to them by Eagles’ bass player Timothy B. Schmit. Cheeseburger in Paradise was written in and debuted on his 1978 album, Son of a Sailor, 14 years later he released a four-disc boxed set called Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads which came with a 66-page Parrot Head Handbook and in it, Buffett explained the story behind the song, “The myth of the cheeseburger in paradise goes back to a long trip on my first boat, the Euphoria. We had run into some very rough weather crossing the Mona Passage between Hispanola and Puerto Rico, and broke our new bowsprit. The ice in our box had melted, and we were doing the canned-food-and-peanut-butter diet. The vision of a piping hot cheeseburger kept popping into my mind. We limped up the Sir Francis Drake Channel and into Roadtown on the island of Tortola, where a brand new marina and bar sat on the end of the dock like a mirage. We secured the boat, kissed the ground, and headed for the restaurant. To our amazement, we were offered a menu that featured an American cheeseburger and piña coladas. Now, these were the days when supplies were scarce – when horsemeat was more plentiful than ground beef in the tiny stores of the Third World. Anyway, we gave particular instructions to the waiter on how we wanted them cooked, and what we wanted on them, to which very little attention was paid. It didn’t matter. The overdone burgers on the burned toast buns tasted like manna from Heaven, for, they were the realisation of my fantasy burgers on the trip. That’s the true story. I’ve heard other people and places claim that I stopped or cooked in their restaurants, but that is the way it happened.”

In the second verse were learn about the addition of a big warm bun, in the next verse he states, ‘Heaven on earth with an onion slice’ a couple of verses later we hear, ‘Medium rare with Muenster’d be nice’ and that word, Muenster’d has confused people over the years with most thinking he was saying mustard, but no, Muenster is in fact a soft cheese made in the USA and is common with burgers. Because it melts well, it’s often used for tuna melts, quesadillas, and mac ‘n’ cheese. At one time, on Buffett’s own website, the lyrics for the song included ‘mustard’ and when someone pointed out the error, the webmaster checked with Buffett, confirmed the correct lyric and amended it.

Buffett won his first CMA in 2003 for the song It’s Five O’clock Somewhere. Between 1970 and 2023 Buffett chart 32 albums in the States, but only landed his first chart-topper in 2004 with License To Chill. Buffett then turned his hand to writing, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction and his first three, Tales From Margaritaville (1989), Where Is Joe Merchant? (1992) and A Pirate Looks at Fifty (1998) were number one on the New York Times Best Seller list.

In 2019, Buffett was diagnosed with a rare skin cancer but kept the news private for four years. In May 2023, he announced he was seeking medical attention and rescheduled some tour dates which were never fulfilled, apart from one last surprise 45-minute set at Sunset Cove cafe in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. He died on 1st September 2023 at the age of 76. The cancer was called Merkel cell carcinoma that affects about 2500 people every year. A tribute concert was arranged at the Hollywood Bowl in April 2024 and there, playing live were Snoop Dogg, Paul McCartney and Pitbull among many others.