As a regular at the Belmont Avenue folk club Quiet Knight, Buffett became a friend and collaborator with Chicago favorite Steve Goodman.
Years before “Margaritaville” established Jimmy Buffett as a bard of the tropical beaches, the singer-songwriter was a folk club regular in a city lapped by the waves of chilly Lake Michigan.
His visits to Chicago in the early 1970s usually took him to Quiet Knight, a Belmont Avenue fixture of the folk scene then thriving in the city. Buffett found Chicagoans receptive to his mix of acoustic guitar ditties and lighthearted storytelling.
“There were just so many good people [in Chicago] doing solo acoustic guitar shows,” Buffett told the Sun-Times’ Dave Hoekstra in 2011. “The Holstein brothers, Bonnie Koloc, Mike Smith. And those singer-songwriters also had to be comedians and emcees. I had to do that in my early New Orleans days. …”
“So meeting all those people in Chicago was a renaissance for me. They were great storytellers, bulls— artists on stage and performers. I gravitated toward that. I found my place.”
During his stints at Quiet Knight he befriended Chicago luminary Steve Goodman, headliner at the larger club Earl of Old Town, and enlisted Goodman to play guitar on his early albums. Buffett went on to record Goodman’s songs “Banana Republics” and “California Promises,” and collaborated with his friend on tracks including “Frank and Lola” and the Key West ballad “Woman Going Crazy on Caroline Street.” among others.
Goodman tapped Buffett in 1972 to pose with a small group of friends for the cover of his album “Somebody Else’s Troubles.” With long hair and mustache, he stands between fellow musician John Prine and Goodman with his family, wife Nancy and baby daughter Jessie.
