‘Come Monday’: Jimmy Buffett’s Lonely Days Lead To Breakthrough Song
Written while he was on the road in California, the song led to a marked upturn in fortunes for the Mississippi troubadour.
When Jimmy Buffett got that Monday morning feeling in 1974, he couldn’t have been happier.
The Mississippi troubadour was already more than four years into a stubbornly slow-building recording career when his fourth studio album Living and Dying In 3/4 Time, his second for ABC Records, was released that February. Buffett was studiously developing his live reputation, but had seen only flickers of commercial recognition to date.
The previous LP, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, hovered outside Billboard’s Top 200 album chart while one of its singles, “The Great Filling Station Holdup,” shinned halfway up the country listings. Another, “Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit,” was a Top 30 entry on the Adult Contemporary survey. Those early Billboard nods would, nevertheless, have been sweet for a man who, in his earlier 20s, was an editorial assistant on the magazine.
The difference, in 1974, was a single that could be his flagship as Buffett set sail towards more profitable waters. “Come Monday,” written like most of Living and Dying In 3/4 Time by Buffett himself and produced by Don Gant, was released in April, as he continued a rigorous touring schedule that was taking him ever further around the States.
Buffett had just completed a residency at Nashville’s Exit/In, and was all set for a return to the Troubadour in Los Angeles, when the song began its persuasive seduction of AC, pop and (to a minor extent) country formats. Largely autobiographical, the lyric described the singer travelling to California “for the Labor Day Weekend show.” He did indeed open there for Country Joe McDonald, over three nights at the Lion’s Share club in San Anselmo, some 35 miles north over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.
His first marriage having already ended in divorce, Buffett had met Jane Slagsvol, a South Carolina native who had relocated to Key West, Florida, and quickly became the romantic focus of the writer’s new songs. They included “Come Monday,” in which the homesick narrator yearned to return to his new love and future wife after his live engagements, boldly confessing that “California has worn me quite thin.”
He completed the song in the budget hotel in which he was staying, “deathly depressed,” as he reflected on Late Night With David Letterman in 1983, when he described “Come Monday” as “the song that kept me from killing myself in the Howard Johnson in Marin County.” Soon after returning from the road, at Woodland Studios in Nashville on October 23, he recorded it.
“Come Monday” was a recommended title in the Pop section of Billboard’s Top Single Picks in the April 13, 1974 issue. The song, and the parent album, were both beneficiaries of the 18-minute promotional film commissioned by ABC and captured on location around his Key West home. Featuring Buffett performing this and several other numbers, it was shown in ABC theaters in the south and south-east United States as the album emerged.
‘Success waiting to bust out’
Record World’s review recognized the song’s, and Buffett’s, clear potential. “Start-of-the-week day already immortalized from Fats Domino to Carpenters should hit paydirt once more via Buffett’s song of the road-weary performer,” it enthused. “He’s got success inside him just waiting to bust itself out. Come chart day, expect a ‘Monday’ monster from Jimmy.”
Living and Dying In 3/4 Time made the right side of the Top 200 line on Billboard, entering in the March 2 issue. Despite only reaching No.176, it spent a promising 13 weeks on the chart. Pop airplay for “Come Monday” gave Buffett his Hot 100 debut on May 18, a 14-week run taking it as high as No.30. As befitted its easy listening appeal, the song went as high as No.3 on the Adult Contemporary chart, although it stalled at No.58 country.
The enduring appeal of “Come Monday” was underlined when latter-day country superstar Kenny Chesney recorded a version for the special edition, exclusive to Target, of his eighth studio album When The Sun Goes Down in 2004. Seven years later, Buffett joined Chesney to perform it live on stage in Nashville.
Following Buffett’s death (poignantly, over the Labor Day weekend) in September 2023, Chesney sang “Come Monday” in tribute at his next full concert, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa in April 2024. The same month, Brandi Carlile performed it at the all-star Keep the Party Going: A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett at the Hollywood Bowl, which also featured other friends and admirers of Buffett such as Paul McCartney, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Jon Bon Jovi and Sheryl Crow.
Listen to “Come Monday” on Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, remastered in 2024.
