Changes In Latitudes Turns 35

Submit your review or read what other's have said about Jimmy's albums and DVDs

Moderator: SMLCHNG

Post Reply
Tiki Torches
At the Bama Breeze
Posts: 4374
Joined: October 23, 2006 5:15 pm

Changes In Latitudes Turns 35

Post by Tiki Torches »

From the All Things Music Plus page on Facebook:

Image

ON THIS DATE (35 YEARS AGO)
January 20, 1977 – Jimmy Buffett Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4/5
# Allmusic 4/5
# Rolling Stone (see original review below)

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes is the breakthrough 1977 album by Jimmy Buffett. The album, his eighth, remains the best-selling album of Buffett's career, and contains his biggest single, "Margaritaville". It was released on this date in January 1977.

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.

Changes also represented the beginning of the end of the "Key West Albums": the Don Gant-produced A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973), Living & Dying in 3/4 Time (1974), A1A (1974), and Havaña Daydreamin' (1975). It is these four albums that capture the feel of early 1970s Key West, Florida and Buffett's experiences as a struggling musician and storyteller. Although the albums are not exclusively about Key West, they detail the laid back island ethos of the small island city and its pre-"condo commando" status as an American Casablanca...a place where no one knows your name and would not care if they did. At the time, Key West was a derelict navy town looking for a direction and was filled with small bars and restaurants craving troubadours like Buffett, Steve Goodman, Jerry Jeff Walker, and others who would play for bar money. The albums document life in the Gulf of Mexico Region ("Biloxi", "Banana Republics", "Wonder Why We Ever Go Home") with displays of touring craziness ("Miss You So Badly"). After Changes, Buffett's scope grew to include the entire Caribbean and, later, the vast expanse of what would become "world music." Buffett's Key West experiences would pepper his later work (even recording his albums in Key West's Shrimpboat Sound), but not like it did in the 1973-1977 period. It is this period, along with the 1978 and 1979 albums that created the mythos Jimmy Buffett has parlayed into icon status as a performer, restaurateur, entrepreneur, author, and celebrity.

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes reached #12 on the Billboard 200 album chart and #2 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. The album was also certified "Platinum" by the RIAA.
Two singles from the album charted including "Margaritaville" (#8 on the Billboard Hot 100; #13 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart; #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart) and "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" (#37 Hot 100; #24 Country; #11 Easy Listening).

ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW
The wry humor and carefully etched scenes that made Jimmy Buffett's A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean so endearing have been slowly evaporating. What remains three albums later are the occasional clever line and a lot of self-pitying drinking songs. The only notable exception is the desperately sad "In the Shelter," the tale of a very lost young woman.

The drinking tunes, it should be added, probably work in live performance. One can get away with one-liner songs if the picking and mood are right. Here, however, Norbert Putnam's overwrought production and arrangements milk each number of its potential charm, emotion or, for that matter, s***-kicking impact. A few loose country licks would have been more in order than the strings and flutes provided.

There's a little more enthusiasm on the second side than on the first. But when it comes to this kind of laid-back (uptempo or down) drinking music, Jerry Jeff Walker'll play 'em all under the table any night.
~ Ira Mayer, Rolling Stone, 4/7/77.

TRACKS
All song written by Jimmy Buffett except where noted.
1. Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes 3:15
2. Wonder Why We Ever Go Home 3:51
3. Banana Republics (Burgh/Goodman/Rothermel) 5:11
4. Tampico Trauma 4:35
5. Lovely Cruise (Jonathan Baham) 3:54
6. Margaritaville 4:09
7. In the Shelter 4:00
8. Miss You So Badly (Buffett/Taylor) 3:41
9. Biloxi (Winchester) 5:38
10. Landfall 3:14
dnw
Last Man Standing
Posts: 42078
Joined: March 3, 2004 6:50 pm
Number of Concerts: 0
Location: South Georgia

Re: Changes In Latitudes Turns 35

Post by dnw »

Happy Birthday, Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes!
Image


Debbie
Post Reply