He was quite a collector of unique guitars ...
“I was living in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer at that time,” Buffett recounts, “and the only guy I knew who had a Gibson Everly Brothers Flattop model was my pal J.D. Souther. But man, I really wanted one of my own. I just loved the look and sound of that guitar. I was finally able to find a 1962 Everly Brothers through a guy at a shop in Florida. A little bit later, J.D. came to Aspen to play a show, and we had a party for him. When he got there, I said, ‘C’mon over here, man, I want to show you something’ I got out my 1962 Everly Brothers and started playing it, jamming with J.D., and it was going great. Then J.D. stops and says, ‘Jimmy, I’ve got to talk to you for a minute. I didn’t tell you this, but my Everly Brothers got stolen about two months ago. And you’ve been playing it for the last ten minutes!’
“Well, I gave that guitar right back to J.D. on the spot,” Buffett continues. “And I contacted the guy in Florida that sold it to me—he sold Moroccan rugs, guitars, and hash pipes, as I recall—and I said, ‘I don’t know where you got that guitar you sold me, but it was stolen, and it belonged to a friend of mine, so I gave it back to him. So, unless you want to see federal investigators coming down here, you’d better have something for me of equal value that I can trace the numbers on to make sure it’s not stolen. And you’d better have it
quick.’ Sure enough, he showed up a few days later with that 1962 Gibson J-100.”