By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Music Blogger
Wow!
Double wow!!
Triple wow!!!
That was my immediate reaction after watching Jimmy Buffett’s just released “University of Bourbon Street” video. I sat watching it with chills going down my spine and immediately watched it again. After pausing, of course, to make myself some boat drinks.
“It combines,” I said aloud, “two great things: Jimmy Buffett and New Orleans.”
The video and song is from his final album, Equal Strain On All Parts, which also includes the gems “Bubbles Up” and “Like My Dog.” This one reflects on Jimmy’s ties to New Orleans, which included him playing in a bar on Bourbon Street in his early struggling musician days.
The video is a gumbo mix of Buffett in Nawlens, retracing many of his steps on the Crescent City. It has clips of Jimmy Buffett in New Orleans from the 1970s to recent days, plus studio footage of the song’s recording session.
It shows him walking the familiar streets, begging for tips like any street musician with a sign in his guitar case stating “will play for gumbo,” tossing beads off a Mardi Gras float, posing by a street car, on stage at Jazz Fest, in a kitchen serving him some gumbo and a video of him leaning out an upstairs window of his Margaritaville Cafe (now closed). About all that’s missing is showing him getting his first scar at a Bourbon Street bar and eating too-hot-to-touch donuts at Cafe du Mond.
The title came from the fact that Buffett learned more about life and performing on Bourbon Street than he ever did at any university.
The song is typically Buffett, upbeat and happy. It makes you want to go to New Orleans (again) and imagine what it was like to be there if you happened upon this unknown musician at the time if you were on Bourbon Street in the 70s.
Jimmy was such a part of New Orleans and it a part of him that he replied “I don’t think there ever would have been!,” to CBS Reporter Tracy Smith when she asked him “do you think there would be a Jimmy Buffett if there wasn’t a New Orleans?”
I was fortunate enough to witness Buffett’s connection to New Orleans first hand. I saw him play a packed private show at Margaritaville. I also saw him at Jazz Fest.
Recorded in 2023, the song “University of Bourbon Street” was co-written by Buffett and Will Kimbrough and co-produced by Michael Utley and Mac McAnally. It also has Preservation Hall Jazz Band members Ben Jaffe, Ronell Johnson, Charles Gabriel, Kevin Louis and Clinton Maedgen.
And let me say this, Jimmy sure went out in style.
Fins Up!
Kevin Wilkerson is a self-confessed Parrothead and went to more than 60 Jimmy Buffett concerts all across the USA.
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