Changes In Latitudes Changes In Attitudes Son Of A Son Of A Sailor Jimmy Buffett

Changes In Latitudes Changes In Attitudes Album: Same name (1977)
Son Of A Son Of A Sailor Album: Son of a Son of a Sailor (1978)
by Jimmy Buffett

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes is the seventh studio album by American popular music singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. This is his breakthrough album, which remains the best-selling studio album of Buffett's career, and contains his biggest single, "Margaritaville". It was initially released in January 1977 as ABC AB-990 and rereleased on its successor label, MCA.

Changes was very popular and critically well-received and was a transitional album on several levels for Buffett. In a commercial sense, it ushered in Buffett's greatest period of chart and airplay popularity – changing him from an FM cult favorite and minor hitmaker to a top-draw touring artist whose albums sold in the millions, receiving regular AM airplay at the time. Changes would be followed by equally popular and more grandiose expressions of Buffett's "Caribbean Soul" on Son of a Son of a Sailor (1978) and Volcano (1979). All of these albums would combine pop, bar-band rock, country, folk, and reggae influences with the professional production of Norbert Putnam.

The title track begins with an instrumental introduction which initially resembles "Yellow Bird" (originally a 19th-century Haitian song, which gained popularity in the U.S. through a Hawaiian-flavored instrumental by the Arthur Lyman group in 1961), and then it gradually evolves into the distinctive chorus of the song itself. In the song, the line "good times and riches and son-of-a-bitches, I've seen more than I can recall" was replaced with "good time and riches, some bruises and stitches, I've seen more than I can recall" for the radio edit single release of the title-track, with rather crude (and obvious) editing, although American Top 40 did play the original unedited version only once when it debuted at No. 38 on 10/22/77.

"Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" was one of Buffett's more popular songs with fans, and was part of "The Big 8" that he played at almost all of his concerts. Recorded live versions of the song appear on You Had to Be There, and the video Live by the Bay.

Buffett wrote Son Of A Son Of A Sailor about his grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, who was a huge influence on his life. Buffett's grandfather was a sailor born in the town of Rose Blanche in Newfoundland, Canada, later moving to Glace Bay in Nova Scotia and eventually settling in Mobile, Alabama. His death in 1970 also inspired Buffett's early tune "The Captain and the Kid."

Son Of A Son Of A Sailor was the only song Jimmy Buffett performed in his only appearance on Saturday Night Live (May 13, 1978). He had to do it sitting down with his leg propped up in a cast after breaking it in a softball game earlier that week.

Buffett said of the song: "I saw a picture of my grandfather after he had come back 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. 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."

In the lyrics, Buffett claims to have "Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks, and I learned much from both of their styles." According to the biography Jimmy Buffett: The Man From Margaritaville Revealed by Steve Eng, the singer grew up reading the classics on the insistence of his mother. One that stood out was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, an adventurous tale about a boy who tussles with pirates on the quest for buried treasure.

Son Of A Son Of A Sailor was Buffett's highest-charting album of the '70s, peaking at #10 in the US.

Buffett said of the bonus 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.