A1A by Jimmy Buffett

A1A, Jimmy Buffett's fifth album, hit the racks on Dunhill in December 1974, the third major-label stop on his Key West run with producer Don Gant at the controls. It takes its name from Florida State Road A1A, the strip of blacktop that hugs the Atlantic through one beach town after another, and the original back cover is simply a photograph of a stretch of it. The road turns up in "Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season" as well.

This is Buffett before the restaurants and the hotels, working a country-rooted sound that leans toward the sunburned island escapism he would later turn into a whole way of life. The keeper is "A Pirate Looks at Forty", one of the hits later known as his "Big 8". The album outlived its first label, too, coming back on ABC and then MCA.

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