This was written by Corey Malcom, lead historian in the Monroe County Library’s Florida Keys History Center, as part of his monthly “Island Chronicles.” It is republished here with permission of the library, and has been lightly edited for space.
By Corey Malcom
With the recent death of musician Jimmy Buffett, we at the Florida Keys History Center have been inspired to look back at his beginnings in Key West. While going through old issues of the local newspaper we recently came across an account of one of Buffett’s earliest performances on the island. The review of the show, by William (Bill) Huckel, founder of the Solares Hill newspaper and a leader of Key West’s counterculture community, details a two-set show Buffett gave at Crazy Ophelia’s Café on Jan. 27, 1972. Considering that the generally agreed-upon date of Buffett’s first arrival to Key West is the end of 1971, this would have been one of his first shows on the island. And, indeed, in a January 2022 interview, Buffett said his first performance in the Keys was at Crazy Ophelia’s; from there he got gigs at Howie’s Lounge and the Chart Room. It is not clear if the 1972 show (at Crazy Ophelia’s) was his very first in Key West, but it was certainly one of them.
Crazy Ophelia’s Café, at 615 Duval St. (now Antonia’s restaurant), was new to Key West when Buffett played there, having opened in December 1971. It was described in a newspaper article as “a delightfully intoxicating (but non-alcoholic) café and dance palace” that served “assorted wiggy head food, espresso, exotic drinks and magic.”
Aside from its being a restaurant, the owners John J. Young and Hank Villate created Ophelia’s to serve as a community center for Key West’s youth, the local hippie scene and the transient “freak” population that was then drifting to the island. At Ophelia’s, young people could find food, a safe retreat and social services such as free medical care, drug counseling and job placement.
The owners of Crazy Ophelia’s also made music a large part of the café’s mission, and amateur performers, professionals and multi-player “hootenanny” jam sessions all graced its stage. … The venue also hosted seminars and lectures on subjects as diverse as civil rights, the logistics of bail-bonding, voter registration and even local marine biology.
As for Buffett’s January 1972 performance, Huckel’s review makes it clear there was already some buzz on the island about the “young Nashville folk gypsy.” As Huckel noted, Crazy Ophelia’s was “jammed and filled with anticipation” for his performance.
The 25-year-old Buffett had been a working musician since his college days, and had recorded two albums in Nashville (albeit unsuccessful ones) by the time he arrived in Key West. Buffett was not a novice guitar-slinger wandering the island. He had come to Key West with a repertoire, seasoned performing skills and a growing reputation.
Huckel’s praise for the performance was high. Buffett, he wrote, “picked and plucked at the strings of his guitar and the hearts of a hushed crowd…” Huckel was even impressed enough to dub the musician “a spokesman for this generation.” Ultimately, he said of Buffett, “This guy made everyone feel like one big, happy family.”
A working musician, ‘quite vigorously on the road’
Buffett’s warm reception at Crazy Ophelia’s heralded the Key West phase of his career, which would come to define his persona and tie him to the island forever, but he was still frequently on the road. An article in Billboard magazine from May 20, 1972, noted he had just played multiple dates in Mississippi and Louisiana. … Buffett stressed the importance of all this touring in a 1981 interview: “A lot of people have the misconception that when I came here, I stayed in a house in a rented room and stayed drunk for 10 years and became a star. That’s absolutely not true. … I was quite vigorously on the road, doing concerts. The only way for me to survive was to do concerts.”
Despite spending much of his time on the road, Key West was home to Buffett through much of the 1970s and ’80s, and he wrote many of his most beloved songs on or about the island. In 2023, when his biggest hit “Margaritaville” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, he reminisced about its Keys roots. “Somebody had broken down on the Seven-Mile Bridge. And we were stuck there for an hour, and I just sat … looking out, and I finished the song there, and I got to Key West. And I was working in a little club on Duval Street called Crazy Ophelia’s, and I went in, and I had to work that night, and I played the song. People liked it. I went, ‘Wow, this is pretty good.’ And, you know, it was, it was fresh. It was probably six hours old. Maybe even four years before it got recorded.”
As 1972 progressed, Crazy Ophelia’s and its owners became enmeshed in legal disputes involving loitering laws enacted to harass the young people who hung out outside the café. The ACLU intervened, and the laws were rescinded when it was proved they were being selectively enforced. Later, in the fall of 1972, the café became a headquarters of sorts for the local Democratic party, and 11 of 12 candidates supported from there won their contests. With those successes and the fading of the hippie movement, John Young said, “We had achieved our purposes. It was time to move along.” By 1973, Crazy Ophelia’s was gone.
However short-lived, the café was influential, both as a center for Key West’s anti-establishment community and as the place where a young Jimmy Buffett got his start on the island. Ophelia’s stage was the birthplace for the popular stereotype of modern Key West. We are grateful that Bill Huckel was at the café that January night with a pen in his hand to document how it happened. Through his words, we can see that the opening-day hype about Crazy Ophelia’s was true – magic was indeed on the menu.
