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 y
