Column: Little Feat’s Sam Clayton treasures memories from touring with Jimmy Buffett

Since the ‘70s, I have clung, remora-like, to Jimmy Buffett’s music, always anxious to abandon the permanent whitewater rocking our lives and seek landfall in a sunshine state of mind.

Jimmy died three hurricane seasons ago, but his songs always return like whisperings of a gentle ghost, his music an antidote to my landlocked angst. It’s how I sustain my place in this crazy conga line of life we’re born into. 

Jimmy indirectly influenced me as a writer when I was just a kid. My first byline appeared in his newsletter, The Coconut Telegraph, in 1986. While I have logged hundreds of bylines since, none have matched the original thrill of seeing my name boldfaced in that Key West-based publication. Since then, I have often written about Jimmy as my key influencer. 

Recently, I talked with Sam Clayton, 79, of the legendary band Little Feat, a group Jimmy loved. The eclectic sounds of Jimmy’s Coral Reefer Band and Little Feat share similar gumbo-like sensibilities, as if both bands met at some New Orleans crossroad. Sam, a revered conga player and vocalist (he sang lead throughout Little Feat’s recent Grammy nominated traditional blues album, Sam’s Place), joined The Reefers in the ‘80s during a Little Feat hiatus. 

“I wasn’t familiar with him,” recalls Clayton. “I was told that this guy named Jimmy Buffett wants you, but he thinks you won’t want to work with him. I said, ‘Hey man, give me a shot and I’ll take it.’ The next day I went to rehearsal, and the day after that, we were on the road.”

“I just didn’t think you would consider me,” Sam recalls Jimmy saying, as if joining the Reefers would be a career backstep, reflecting his awe for Little Feat. Sam, in need of work, replied, “Hey man, your hand and my hand are the same color: money!” On a more serious note, Clayton tells me, “It was about surviving at that time.”

 “Time Loves A Hero” was one of Jimmy’s favorite Little Feat songs. It was released in 1977, the same year as Jimmy’s signature hit, “Margaritaville,” a title that became an indelible stamp mark on the mental passports of his fan base—me included. 

Jimmy’s affinity for “Time Loves A Hero” isn’t surprising. It’s about a man who escapes a blue-collar life and “spends his days in the sun” in Puerto Rico, a familiar theme for our man in Margaritaville. Thirty-one years later, Buffett arranged for, and performed with, Little Feat on a re-recording of the song to increase public awareness of Little Feat. This year, Little Feat, still touring and recording, released its latest album, Strike Up The Band, which is among the best of its two dozen albums. 

Sam was an active Coral Reefer for most of the ‘80s. Port of call highlights included Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti. 

While Sam didn’t know Jimmy Buffett from Warren Buffett at first, he soon realized that he was onto something good. The caliber of talent in The Coral Reefer Band was high. To be personally picked to join Jimmy’s band was no little feat. 

“I mean, Robert Greenidge. He’s an amazing guy,” Sam says of the steel drum legend from Trinidad who toured with Jimmy to the end and collaborated with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson and Earth, Wind, & Fire. “Robert is an extreme musician.”

Paycheck aside, it was a big deal to perform with bandmates like Reefer long-timers Mike Utley and Greg “Fingers” Taylor, famed percussionist Ralph MacDonald, and Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles, another ‘70s band on hiatus then.

Sam discovered that a Buffett concert wasn’t just about music; it was a major production with a Mardi Gras / Carnival / down-island vibe involving 20,000 backup singers each night who seldom skipped a lyric. The stages were postcards from the tropics. People filled the venues each night donning crazy, colorful Hawaiian attire and showcasing inflatable sharks, coconut bras, shark fin hats, grass skirts, margaritas, pirate personas . . . you get the idea. Temporary expatriates from reality; blender brains entranced by the music’s paradisiacal pulse; devout, flip-flopped, often landlocked followers assuming instant islander status; sea and sun worshippers resurrected from their otherwise daily doldrums. His shows were, to paraphrase one of his best island songs, “a magic kind of medicine that no doctor could prescribe.” But doctors attended his shows too. Simply stated, a Jimmy Buffett show was voodoo with mercy. 

“I didn’t know he was that big. I saw all those people, and I thought man, this is a whole other world,” Sam says. “Buffett had five buses for the band, three or four for the crew, and 18 trucks. Little Feat had one truck and two buses. He had a carnival train (of golf carts) that would take us to the stage. There were people with stilts and costumes,” says Clayton. 

Sam recalls visiting Jimmy at his Aspen home, where they caught trout from a nearby stream, the freshest fish Sam ever tasted. There were sporting events between the band and crew. Jimmy, who flew seaplanes, would take Sam island hopping in the Caribbean in search of lunch—a cheeseburger in paradise perhaps. In Australia, Sam joined Jimmy, a seasoned sailor, aboard a large sailboat. Sharing the sailing story from a table aboard the Little Feat bus, Sam pantomimed the onboard trepidation he felt, Jimmy calmly at the helm of a boat tightly circling and dipping during a mad dance between wind and water. Sam recalled clinging to anything solid to avoid going overboard. Jimmy laughed the whole time. “I’m not a boat guy,” Sam laughs. 

Sam fell for one of Jimmy’s pranks when waiting to be picked up at an airport by a driver Jimmy had personally arranged. Approaching a man holding a sign with his name on it, Sam quickly realized with great delight that the “driver” was actually TV journalist Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes fame, a pal of Jimmy’s. “Ed Bradley. It was too much,” Sam laughs. “The stories go on forever touring with Buffett. It was amazing.” 

Sam still cherishes a gift Jimmy surprised him with in the ‘80s: a large Swiss Army Knife with a leather case. Jimmy fondly references such a knife in his 1985 song, “Last Mango In Paris.” Maybe that’s the connection. “I thought it was the greatest gift in the world. I still got it. It’s like brand new. I don’t bring it on the road. Somebody will steal it.” Adds Sam, “Everybody always asks, ‘Is he nice?’ Yes, he’s nice. More than nice. Jimmy would do anything to make you happy.”

Scott can be reached at scottsaalman@gmail.com.