Author Tom Corcoran, first mate to his Key West pal Jimmy Buffett, dies at 79 in Florida
For more than 40 years, countless numbers have hoisted voices to the rafters at concert venues the world over to sing the opening lines to a song Tom Corcoran scrawled on a pad in Key
West that he never finished. The shrill ring of a phone call from his famous friend interrupted his writing.
Corcoran tossed his scribbling into a duffel bag and that was that. Until it wasn’t.
Thomas Franklin Corcoran, 79, died on Jan. 16, 2023, in Lakeland, Florida, with his sister Carolyn Inglis and his friend Dinah George at his side, his family said in their obituary that was published in Corcoran’s hometown Cleveland newspaper.
Corcoran died of cancer, his friend William McKeen, a Boston University journalism professor and author, wrote in an affectionate “Farewell, My Friend” tribute on his blog.
Corcoran is known to readers of his Alex Rutledge murder mystery series, set in and around Key West. Titles include “The Mango Opera,” “Bone Island Mambo,” “Guava Moon Revenge” and the recent “A Step Beyond Chaos” that was published in 2022.
And, oh, yes, he wrote a biography about his famous friend, the one whose phone call almost sank the song that would turn into “Fins.” The 1979 Top 40 hit remains a concert staple many joyously sang along to this month at Jimmy Buffett’s Second Wind series of concerts at the Coffee Butler Amphitheater in Key West.
Corcoran wrote “Jimmy Buffett: The Key West Years” in 2006, documenting their shared history in the Florida Keys that began more than 50 years ago.
THE KEYS’ ZELIG OR GUMP
Corcoran’s résumé would make for its own colorful novel, or character in a Jimmy Buffett Key West song.
Born July 13, 1943, in Cleveland, Corcoran graduated from Miami University of Ohio. “He was a U.S. Navy lieutenant, radio disc jockey, screenplay writer, Mustang Monthly editor, leather goods maker for Burdines, AAA travel counselor, photographer for Jimmy Buffett, Key West bartender — and a stint as Taco Tom, the sombrerowearing driver of a threewheeled bicycle cart,” the Miami Herald recounted when Corcoran’s photographs were on exhibit at the Custom House in 2007.
His family added, “Tom was many things to many people, but above all, he was a beloved member of his family. He had a way of finding himself in the middle of great stories without knowing precisely how he got there.”
In 1968, the Navy stationed Corcoran in Key West. He moved to Lakeland in his later years, but the Keys define his public persona.
“He gave me so much material and so much of himself when I was working on ‘Mile Marker Zero.’ Hell — he gave me the book. He was the guy who talked me into doing it, and I will always be grateful,” McKeen told the Herald.
Published in 2011, “Mile Marker Zero” is McKeen’s account of how writers like Corcoran, Buffett, Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison and Hunter S. Thompson found their identities in Key West. The book features a chapter on how Corcoran came to be known, briefly, as Taco Tom.
Apparently in 1970, Corcoran was sitting on a bar stool inside Captain Tony’s and downing a drink when a hippie “with a mushroom cloud of hair” rode by on a three-wheel bike hawking tacos and sauce, McKeen wrote. Corcoran decided that was a cool job and he told the islander he wanted it. Two days later, the hirsute man rode his bike inside Captain Tony’s, pulled up to Corcoran, once again at the bar, and handed him his bike and tacos.
“I ended the book with the two of us out for dinner. That scene, where I’m bragging on him to our waitress, is classic
Tom. He accomplished so much but was a humble, modest man. I keep telling her about his novels, his songwriting, his associations, and the more he talks, the more he blushes,” McKeen said.
“The impression I got from my research on Key West in the ‘70s was that while everyone was out-drugging each other, Tom was the sober one — observing, and seeing that what needed to be done got done. He really is a Zelig or a Gump, when you think about all of the places he went and all of the people he touched,” McKeen said.
MEETING JIMMY BUFFETT
If Corcoran could have carried a tune as well as he wrote novels or shot artwork on Buffett album packages, including “Havana Daydreaming,” “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” “You Had to Be There: Recorded Live” and “Volcano,” perhaps he could have sung “I Have Found Me a Home.”
Buffett wrote and sang that autobiographical tune about Key West in 1973 for the first of his classic Key Westthemed albums, “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.” The song’s memories apply to Corcoran, too. He was integral in Buffett’s career.
“Tom Corcoran was the first person who befriended me in Key West, after Jerry Jeff Walker dropped me at the Chart Room Bar in 1971,” Buffett told the Miami Herald in an email he wrote from a plane on the way to Boston after the first of his recent
Key West concerts.
“Tom was one of the amazing bartenders there. He bought me my first drink in Key West. Well, not really, because there was a pretty unwritten rule in those days, among the platoon of amazing bartenders, the local writers, artists (singers included) [that we] did not pay for drinks. They would be put on the tabs of hotel guests, who rarely checked their bar tabs. Tom was the conduit, to the local culture as well,” Buffett said. “Sailors, Cubans, hippies, gays, cops, fishing captains and pot dealers.”
Corcoran also introduced Buffett to writer Tom McGuane, a Hemingway protégé, who wound up marrying Buffett’s sister Laurie.
“Corcoran, as an ex-Naval officer and navigator, helped me along, when I was learning celestial navigation, on my own. At sea, he was one of the most competent sailors I knew, especially when things went to hell out on the big bad ocean, Gulf Stream, and the Mona and Amerada passages. I was especially happy for him, when he was finally recognized as a successful writer. That meant a lot to him,” Buffett said.
“The other gift he left behind were his photos of
Key West, in a time gone by. He was probably the best historian of those halcyon days of the ‘70s in Key West, and a top-notch DJ as well. He was a Renaissance man and occasional song writing partner — ‘Cuban Crime of Passion,’ ‘Woman Going Crazy on Caroline Street.’ My old friend has crossed the bar, and I will miss him. Sail on Tom,” Buffett wrote.
In December 2021, Corcoran and Buffett each did lengthy interviews with the Miami Herald to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Buffett’s career launch in the Keys.
During his interview Corcoran joked: “Essentially, I took decent pictures and I was cheap. And I knew how to sail a sailboat. So I was good to have around. I had no great delusions about my artistry as a photographer, but all I knew was that I had opportunity and that was huge.”
ORIGIN OF ‘FINS’
And then there’s “Fins.” Corcoran told the story of how “Fins” came to be. He was inspired, or rather challenged, when Buffett’s jaunty tune “Margaritaville” barged its way into the Billboard Top 10 to become his signature hit.
“It was probably ‘77, early ‘78, and I said that son of a b---- is going to be a millionaire,” Corcoran said. “I said that I can write that stuff. I can write songs like that. Maybe I’ll just start writing them and I can give them to other people or something like that. So I sat down. I started writing a song. And I wrote a verse. And the phone rang. Well, that blew the whole thing so I never wrote more than one verse.”
About two weeks later, Buffett, who had broken his leg from an encounter with a second base during a baseball game, called Corcoran and asked him to fly down to Antigua to meet him for a sailboat race and to take pictures for a story that they could do together for Outside magazine.
Corcoran packed. He saw that piece of paper on his desk and threw it into his duffel bag and flew to Antigua to meet Buffett and they met up on the water. While on the boat fishing through his bag for a bathing suit, Corcoran’s hand caught the paper.
“I said, ‘Hey Jimmy, here look at this.’ And it said: ‘She lives down by the ocean and she worries about the sharks and they hang out at the local bar and they feed right after dark.’ And he said, ‘OK’ and he threw it into his little journal that he always kept, and a year later it showed up and it was ‘Fins,’” Corcoran said.
“That was a nice surprise because I showed up in Montserrat to do the album photography for ‘Volcano’ there,” Corcoran continued. “And before we went to work taking pictures they’d already been in the studio for about four days the previous week. I showed up on a Monday morning and they took me in there, played me this song, and I thought, ‘Ah, crap. This is rock and roll and I’m going to have to pretend to like it.’”
Corcoran tended to prefer his friend’s deeper compositions, songs like “Cowboy in the Jungle” or “Sending the Old Man Home.” “Fins” is pure Parrothead pop/rock.
“And then I hear this one verse and I said, ‘Well, s---, I’ve heard that before. He didn’t even write that. Oh wait, I did.’ And I look up and Jimmy is flashing fingers at me to tell me what my percentage is going to be.”
SURVIVORS, SERVICES
Corcoran’s survivors include his sons Sebastian and Scott; granddaughters Ellie and Zoe; sisters Carolyn Inglis and Martha Corcoran. He was predeceased by his wife, Judith Matheny Corcoran. Services are private.
Howard Cohen: 305-376-3619, @HowardCohen with a knack for water skiing. She could give you the best advice on mending a broken heart, organizing a board meeting and picking the best outfit for the movies, her sister said.
“Her greatest gift was her kindness,” Sawyer said. “Her instinct for trying to make everyone else feel they were the champion, they could do it. And to make sure that they soared.”
This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.