Jimmy Buffett's music partner Fingers Taylor dies. Check out his legacy

Greg "Fingers" Taylor, who partnered with Jimmy Buffett on many of the entertainer's most popular songs, has died.

Taylor, who played the harmonica, and is well known for having played with many of Mississippi's blues legends in the state's club scene for many decades died on Thanksgiving Day after a long battle with Alzheimer's.

“It’s a mighty, mighty machine with a tiny, tiny body,” Taylor once told the Clarion Ledger. “I guess that’s always intrigued me about it. How can such a big sound come from something so small?”

Buffett and Taylor were friends, after having met at The University of Southern Mississippi in the early 1970s. Taylor played with Buffett with the Coral Reefer Band for nearly three decades.

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Mississippi country music legend Mac McAnally, who headed up the Coral Reefer Band, commented on X, formerly known as Twitter, about Taylor's death.

"Our Coral Reefer brother Fingers Taylor passed from this world to the backstage area of the next," McAnally said in the post. "I'm imagining a reunion of the most original version of the band when Jimmy sat in with a solo Fingers gig in Hattiesburg at USM. Magical combo of harmonica and Buffett. Rock on boys. We'll catch you for the second set."

Buffett, who was born on Christmas Day of 1946, died Sept. 1.

Taylor once said in an interview that there was an immediate “bonding” between he and Buffett after they met, with the two knowing they “were going to play music together somewhere down the line.”

“It's only fitting we recognize the legacies of Buffett and Taylor, whose contributions to American popular music are indeed significant. The story of their session at The Hub and what followed is a treasured part of the Southern Miss story,” said then University Historian Dr. Chester “Bo” Morgan about the placement of a historical marker located near “The Hub,” a historic center of student activity on the USM campus.

According to his obituary, Taylor was inspired to play music after watching the Beatles play on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964. While born in Witchita, Kansas, Taylor and his family moved to the Jackson area in the late 1960s.

Taylor had taken piano lessons in Kansas, but the blues turned him on to the harmonica. He played both in different bands while at USM, but it soon became clear he had a special relationship with the harmonica. He always kept one stashed in a blue jean pocket.

It came in handy one night in 1973 when Buffett, then a struggling musician who had also attended USM for a while, came to Hattiesburg to play The Hub.

“I’d never seen him before,” Taylor told the Clarion Ledger in 2010. “I remember he was wearing a 10-gallon hat and had long, long blond hair. It was just him and his acoustic guitar.”

Taylor's musical heroes included Paul Butterfield, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, Jerry McCain, Papa George Lightfoot, and most of all Little Water. During his time at USM Greg made his way on stage with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Delaney and Bonnie and Black Oak Arkansas.

Buffett had heard about the local dude who could make a harmonica talk. Midway through the show, he invited Taylor to join him for a few tunes.

“We had a good time and I could tell that Jimmy, at some point, was going to do something different and important,” Taylor said. “But at that time, I was a little better off than he was. He had no car. No money. And he needed to get to Mobile to see some girl. He asked me to drive him down there, and I did.”

By 1975, they were opening shows for Linda Ronstadt, Roger McGuinn and Jerry Jeff Walker.

In 1977, Buffett wrote the Caribbean-flavored song Margaritaville, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart.

Taylor released five studio albums of his own. He was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame in 2012.

He is survived by his sons Steven Taylor, Hunter Taylor and Richard Rierson, sister Melanie Johnston and brother Brent Taylor. He is also survived by nieces and nephews and many cousins and relatives and in the Taylor family.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Wells United Methodist Church in Jackson.

Ross Reily can be reached by email at rreily@gannett.com or at 601-573-2952. You can follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @GreenOkra1.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Greg Taylor dies on Thanksgiving Day in Mississippi