H is for HE WENT TO PARIS

Please note that the videos embedded with the songs were posted by some great Parrotheads on YouTube and not my creation.


"He Went to Paris" (1973) is not a really well known song of Jimmy Buffett's, but it is one of his most poetic and tells a great story.  The album this is from is the intriguingly named A White Sport Coat and  a Pink Crustacean.  


The story is of a man going to Paris "looking for answers" and of the ups, downs, loves and sadness of his life.  He enjoys great love with his wife and family and then loses them all to war and circumstances.  It has been said that Jimmy is writing about a man who was a Spanish Civil War veteran that he met in his travels.  Another interesting aspect to this song is that Jimmy never put it on his concert play lists until at one point he heard that Bob Dylan liked the song, then he start including it more frequently.

The great line in this song for me is "Some of it's magic and some of it's tragic, but I had a good life anyway".