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Cuban Crime Of Passion

by Jimmy Buffett and Tom Corchron

from the album A White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean

Lyrics

Billy Voltaire was a piano player
Up from Miami way
He used to play in the bars
He could sound like the stars
The ladies would pay and pay
Then one night he did wind up playin’ in Havana town
And nobody knew, least Billy Voltaire
That these were his final sounds

‘Cause he met up with Marita, a dancer in from the Coast
Half woman, half child, she drove him half wild
He loved that lady the most
‘Til one night he did find her in the arms of Shrimper Dan
So he pulled a knife, took poor Danny’s life
And then he turned his own cold hand

And it’s just a Cuban crime of passion
Messy and old fashioned
Yeah, that’s what the papers did say
It’s just a Cuban crime of passion
Anejo and knives a slashin’
But that’s what the people like to read about
Up in America, up in America

Well, they never found Marita
Some people say she got ill
And Billy Voltaire had no one to claim him
He was buried up on Pauper’s Hill
And no one talks about ‘em no more
It happened just a week ago
But people get by and people get high
In the tropics they come and they go

And it’s just a Cuban crime of passion
Messy and old fashioned
Yeah, that’s what the papers did say
It’s just a Cuban crime of passion
Anejo and knives a slashin’
But that’s what the people like to read about
Up in America, up in America

Jimmy’s Note:

There used to be a piano player in Key West named Billy Nine Fingers who told me stories about playing the ferryboat that once ran from Key West to Havana. It made me jealous that I hadn’t been around during the wild days of Havana. One day I was reading an article in the Miami Herald about a murder that had taken place in Hialeah in which a love triangle had ended in bloodshed. The reporter called it a “Cuban Crime of Passion.”