Bertie Higgins, born Elbert Joseph Higgins, is an American singer-songwriter whose MusicBrainz tags — "aor," "soft rock," "tropical rock," and "yacht rock" — sketch out a very specific late-70s-to-early-80s musical territory. It's territory he practically helped define.
A Florida Upbringing
Higgins was born in Tarpon Springs, Florida, of Portuguese, Irish, and German descent. Before music, he supported himself as a sponge diver, and started performing at the age of twelve as a ventriloquist — an unusual entry point into show business that predates his recording career by decades.
"Key Largo"
Higgins' defining moment came with "Key Largo," his debut single, released in September 1981. Inspired in part by a failed romance and by the classic Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall film of the same name, the song became his only top 40 hit in the United States, peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1982. It spent 17 weeks in the top 40 and was certified gold by the RIAA — a genuine commercial peak that has kept "Key Largo" in soft rock and yacht rock rotation ever since.
Coining "Trop Rock"
Higgins is also credited with helping popularize the term "trop rock" — describing it as such in a 1986 interview — to capture the laid-back, tropical-flavored sound now associated with artists like Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney. It's a small but real footnote in music terminology history, one that lines up neatly with the "tropical rock" tag attached to his MusicBrainz record.
After the Hit
Following his mainstream chart run, Higgins spent years based in Burbank, California, where he and his two sons produced five feature films before he returned to performing in local bands. He has continued performing live in Florida in the decades since, remaining closely associated with the region and sound that shaped "Key Largo" in the first place.
Bertie Higgins may be a one-hit-wonder by chart standards, but that single hit helped define an entire subgenre's aesthetic — sun, nostalgia, and easy-listening romance — that continues to have an audience today.
Sources
Biographical details drawn from web research including Wikipedia's entries on Bertie Higgins and "Key Largo," and Songfacts; genre tags from MusicBrainz.