True enough, your primary thesis.

"Now I might've joined the merchant marine, if I hadn't learned how to sing..." (from Migration, on the album A-1-A, for non-Buffett fan readers).

A very smart entrepreneur he was, making sure his limited slice of music fame didn't leave him like a washed-up sports or movie star, selling big french fries, cars, or soap (name the artist and song for that reference and win a bonus prize!).

I was never a parrot-head, and I never engaged with any of his hospitality empire or even saw him perform live. But as a lover of carefully crafted simple songs that include a bit of heart and a bit of a sly grin, I will argue he wrote a decent number of those. Few or possibly none of which became his well known hits. Which to me says far more about what the music industry pushes and what people will settle for on radio playlists than about Buffett's singer-songwriter chops, which were at least as good as plenty of others who managed to be more famous (if not richer).