Jimmy Buffett will be a special guest at the University of Miami on Thursday where he’ll give a lecture and host a question and answer session. The event is sponsored by the Frost School of Music and is only open to U of M music students.

“I’m excited that Jimmy Buffet is coming” said Kelly McAleney, a senior music education major. “It’s really rare that students get the chance to see such a huge performer for free, but even more exciting that we get the chance to talk to him and ask him questions.”

In 2005, Jimmy spoke to former Senator Bob Graham’s politics class at Harvard.

The Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger has an article on Greg “Fingers” Taylor, the legendary harmonica player that toured with Buffett for many years and lent his sounds to some of Jimmy’s most famous songs:

Taylor had taken piano lessons in Kansas, but the blues turned him on to the harmonica. He played both in different bands while at USM, but it soon became clear he had a special relationship with the harmonica. He always kept one stashed in a blue jean pocket.

It came in handy one night in 1973 when Buffett, then a struggling musician who had also attended USM for a while, came to Hattiesburg to play The Hub, a popular bar.

“I’d never seen him before,” Taylor recalls. “I remember he was wearing a 10-gallon hat and had long, long blonde hair. It was just him and his acoustic guitar.”

Buffett had heard about the local dude who could make a harmonica talk. Midway through the show, he invited Taylor to join him for a few tunes.

“We had a good time and I could tell that Jimmy, at some point, was going to do something different and important,” Taylor says. “But at that time, I was a little better off than he was. He had no car. No money. And he needed to get to Mobile to see some girl. He asked me to drive him down there, and I did.”

A year later, when Buffett signed a record deal with ABC/Dunhill and started putting a band together, Taylor was the first musician he called. Buffett added Roger Bartlett on guitar, Harry Dailey on bass, Phillip Fajardo on drums … and away they went.

By 1975, they were opening shows for Linda Ronstadt, Roger McGuinn and Jerry Jeff Walker.

In 1977, Buffett wrote the Caribbean-flavored song Margaritaville, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart.

The tune’s carefree island theme became Buffett’s calling card, and a string of hits followed: Cheeseburger In Paradise; A Pirate Looks at Forty; Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes; and Son of a Son of a Sailor, among others.

After opening for the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Jackson Browne over the next three years, Buffet and the Coral Reefers became headliners in 1981. Except to stop long enough to record an album, they stayed on the road for most of the next eight years.

Read the full article here.

Jimmy Buffett has been a supporter of the Jamaican Dogsled team for years. Newton Marshall, a Jamaican musher is competing in the Iditarod race and Jimmy is cheering him on:

Newton Marshall, 26-year-old Jamaican musher, couldn’t have a better fan in the form of Jimmy Buffet. Not only is Buffet rooting for him to win the Iditarod, but he has been his team’s primary sponsor since the Jamaica Dogsled Team was founded by a friend.

“I just love the whole idea of it,” the singer said. “I love the absurdity that when we first did this, people laughed and thought it was a joke and guess what? It isn’t.”

Marshall, who lives in St. Anne Parish in Jamaica, has already completed a 1,000-mile dog sled race: the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. Out of 29 mushers, he came in 13th. To prepare for the Iditarod, he has been training with the defending Iditarod champion Lance Mackey, who is a three-time consecutive winner and a four-time Yukon Quest champion.

If Marshall makes it to the Nome finish line, he will be the first black musher to complete the world’s longest sled dog race.

Learn more about the Jamaica Dogsled team here.

The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour awoke Tuesday afternoon to the sounds of Jimmy Buffett’s “Window On The World”. Mission Control sent up the music at 4:14 pm with the shuttle 220 miles up docked to the International Space Station.

Two American astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station today while crewmates inside the complex crank open for the first time shutters covering seven windows on the Italian-built Cupola observation deck.

“That song is very appropriate today,” said Endeavour mission specialist Kay Hire, who, like Buffett, is a native of Mobile, Ala. “On a day that we’ll be working on opening our new window on the world.”

This isn’t the first time Buffett’s music has served as an astronaut wake-up call. In 2006, the crew of Atlantis awoke to “Twelve Volt Man” and in 2008 it was “Oysters and Pearls” that was played to another Atlantis team.

Endeavour and its crew of six launched February 8th and are scheduled to return to earth on Sunday.

Update – You can listen to the recording of the song and astronaut Kay Hire’s reaction to it here (from NASA via @WAOTNC)

Margaritaville.com just posted another Jimmy Buffett concert, this one across the ocean in Paris:

Friday, September 24th
The Olympia
Paris, France

Tickets on sale February 16th.

The posting says “more information coming soon”

(H/T Ken)