From AL.com: Jimmy Buffett in bronze: New Alabama waterfront statue captures singer’s spirit
Jimmy Buffett has taken up a permanent position overlooking the Mobile waterfront, and it’s clear that sculptor Ben Victor understood the assignment.
A 7.5-foot-tall bronze statue unveiled Thursday morning outside the National Museum of the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t simply provide a static depiction of Buffett. He’s striding, not standing, with one bare foot in the air, his acoustic guitar raised high and his mouth open in song, and there’s a spirit of glee in the pose that makes him look like some kind of pied piper, which of course he was.
Victor told onlookers that when he was working in clay, he played the recording of the 2010 show that Buffett performed on the beach in Gulf Shores after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. “And that’s the clothing that you’ll see him in today when we unveil the bronze,” he said.
It’s all there: the “One Love One Ocean” T-shirt, the tricolor wristbands, the tiki-themed strap on his 12-string, and most of all, the “just come along with me and we’ll have a good time” vibe.
The unveiling comes just two days before the museum opens a 6,000-square-foot exhibition celebrating Buffett’s youth in Mobile and the one-of-a-kind career that followed.