Island Chronicles, vol. 5: Jimmy Buffett at Crazy Ophelia’s – The Dawning of Margaritaville
Welcome to “Island Chronicles,” the Florida Keys History Center’s monthly feature dedicated to investigating and sharing events from the history of Monroe County, Florida. These pieces draw from a variety of sources, but our primary well is the FKHC’s archive of documents, photographs, diaries, newspapers, maps, and other historical materials.
By Corey Malcom, PhD
Lead Historian, Florida Keys History Center
With the recent death of musician Jimmy Buffett, we at the Florida Keys History Center have been inspired to look back at his beginnings in Key West. While going through old issues of the Key West Citizen, we recently came across an account of one of his earliest performances on the island. The review of the show, by William (Bill) Huckel, founder of the Solares Hill newspaper and a leader of Key West’s counterculture community, details a two-set show Buffett gave at Crazy Ophelia’s Café on January 27, 1972.[1] Considering that the generally agreed upon date of Buffett’s first arrival to Key West is the end of 1971, this would have been one of his first shows on the island. And, indeed, in a January 2022 interview, Buffett said that his first performance in the Keys was at Crazy Ophelia’s; from there he got gigs at Howie’s Lounge and the Chart Room.[2] It is not clear if the 1972 show reviewed in the Citizen was his very first in Key West, but it was certainly one of them.
Crazy Ophelia’s Café, at 615 Duval Street (now Antonia’s restaurant), was new to Key West when Jimmy Buffett played there, having opened its doors in December of 1971. In a Key West Citizen profile that marked the new bistro’s debut, it was described as “a delightfully intoxicating (but non-alcoholic) café and dance palace” that served “assorted wiggy head food, espresso, exotic drinks, and magic.”[3] Aside from its being a restaurant, the owners John J. Young and Hank Villate also created Ophelia’s to serve as a community center for Key West’s youth, the local hippie scene, and the transient “freak” population that was then drifting to the island. At Ophelia’s, young people could find food, a safe retreat, and social services such as free medical care, drug counseling, and job placement.[4]
The owners of Crazy Ophelia’s also made music a large part of the café’s mission, and amateur performers, professionals, and multi-player “hootenanny” jam sessions all graced its stage. The performance space was apparently quite nice and described as “a large, barn-like room…rigged with one of the finest stereo sound systems in town.”[5] When musicians were not on stage, the venue was used for public education, and seminars and lectures on subjects as diverse as civil rights, the logistics of bail-bonding, voter registration, and even local marine biology, were held there.
As for Jimmy Buffett’s January 1972 performance, the review of the show makes it clear there was already some buzz on the island about the “young Nashville folk gypsy.” As Huckel noted, Crazy Ophelia’s was “jammed and filled with anticipation” for his performance. It is important to remember that the 25-year-old Buffett had been a working musician since his college days, and he had recorded two albums in Nashville (albeit unsuccessful ones) by the time he arrived in Key West. Plus, he had come from Miami with fellow musician Jerry Jeff Walker, after having just performed a series of shows at Coral Gables’ influential Flick Coffeehouse.[6] Jimmy Buffett was not a novice guitar-slinger wandering the island, he came to Key West with a repertoire, seasoned performing skills, and a growing reputation.
Huckel, probably like most Key Westers, was unfamiliar with Buffett’s songbook, and he mangled the names of many of the songs (in all fairness, some were apparently new and freshly written in Key West, and they may have only had working titles). Others he described only by their general theme. (We will leave it to fans to decipher the clues and reconstruct the setlist.) Huckel’s praise for the performance was high, though: Buffett, he wrote, “picked and plucked at the strings of his guitar and the hearts of a hushed crowd…” Huckel was even impressed enough to dub the musician with the mantle of “a spokesman for this generation.” Ultimately, he said of Buffett, “This guy made everyone feel like one big, happy family.”
A working musician, ‘quite vigorously on the road’
Jimmy Buffett’s warm reception at Crazy Ophelia’s heralded the “Key West” phase of his career, which would come to define his persona and tie him to the island forever, but he was still frequently on the road. An article in Billboard magazine from May 20, 1972, noted he had just played multiple dates in Mississippi and Louisiana, while adding, “Buffett is becoming a strongly booked artist, having played in recent weeks The Bistro in Atlanta, the Quiet Knight in Chicago, The Last Resort in Athens, GA., Crazy Ophelia’s in Key West, and the Raven Gallery in Detroit.”[7] Buffett stressed the importance of all this touring in a 1981 interview with the Key West Citizen: “Mostly, [my success] happened working from the road. A lot of people have the misconception that when I came here, I stayed in a house in a rented room and stayed drunk for ten years and became a star. That’s absolutely not true. …I was quite vigorously on the road, doing concerts. The only way for me to survive was to do concerts.”[8]
Despite spending much of his time on the road, Key West was home to Jimmy Buffett through much of the 1970s and 80s, and he wrote many of his most beloved songs on or about the island. In 2023, when his biggest hit “Margaritaville” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, he reminisced about its Keys roots: The song was first inspired by a drink with a friend in Texas before boarding a flight to Miami, and after he landed, Buffett finished it on the drive back to the Key West and then debuted it that same night at none other than Crazy Ophelia’s. The story in his words: “…I was on the Seven-Mile Bridge, and, ah, somebody had broken down on the Seven-Mile Bridge. And we were stuck there for an hour, and I just sat out there on the Seven Mile Bridge, just looking out, and I finished the song there, and I got to Key West. And I was working in a little club on Duval Street called Crazy Ophelia’s, and I went in, and I had to work that night, and I played the song. People liked it. I went, ‘Wow, this is pretty good.’ And, you know, it was, it was fresh. It was probably six hours old. Maybe even four years before it got recorded.”[9]
As 1972 progressed, Crazy Ophelia’s and its owners became enmeshed in legal disputes involving loitering laws enacted to harass the young people that hung out outside the café. The ACLU intervened, and the laws were rescinded when it was proved they were being selectively enforced. Later, in the fall of 1972, the café became a headquarters of sorts for the local Democratic party, and 11 of 12 candidates supported from there won their contests. With those successes and the fading of the hippie movement, John Young said, “We had achieved our purposes. It was time to move along.” By 1973, Crazy Ophelia’s was gone.
However short-lived, the café was influential, both as a center for Key West’s anti-establishment community and as the place where a young Jimmy Buffett got his start on the island. Those early Duval Street performances would help set the musician’s career on a path towards fame and fortune. And, with the island’s musical alter-ego, the laid-back, alcohol-soaked “Margaritaville,” quite literally making its first appearance during one Buffett gig, the Ophelia’s stage was the birthplace for the popular stereotype of modern Key West. We are grateful that Bill Huckel was at the café that January night with a pen in his hand to document how it happened. Through his words, we can see that the opening-day hype about Crazy Ophelia’s was true – magic was indeed on the menu.
[1] Huckel, William (1972). “Buffett is Popular at Ophelia’s,” Key West Citizen, January 28.
[2] Cohen, Howard (2022). “Jimmy Buffett looks at 50 years after his 1st Key West gig,” Miami Herald, January 20. See also: https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/jimmy-buffett-looks-at-50-years-after-his-1st-key-west-gig/
[3] Kashkin (1972). “Crazy Ophelia’s,” Key West Citizen, January 2, p.13.
[4] Kaufman, Bruce (1972). “Crazy Ophelia’s,” Solares Hill, March, 1(12):11.
[5] Jacobsen, Bud (1984). “John Young: Youth Will Be Served,” Solares Hill, May, 7(5):3.
[6] Eng, Steven (1996). Jimmy Buffett: The Man from Margaritaville Revealed, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, p.124.
[7] Williams, Thomas (1972). “From the Music Capitals of the World.” Billboard, May 20, 84(21):43.
[8] Hargreaves, Kathleen (1981). “Come Monday, Buffett will be in Tallahassee,” Key West Citizen, November 29, p.1B.
[9] Library of Congress (2023). @libraryofcongress Twitter/X status, April 12, 8:52 AM. https://twitter.com/librarycongress/status/1646134218919952384
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