WASHINGTON — Every time I take my younger researchers on superstar interviews, I give them the Warning: Irrespective of how properly you hit it off, don’t really feel unhealthy when you ever run into the celebrities once more and so they act as if they don’t know you. That’s normally the way it goes. Consider them as elusive, shimmering creatures from one other planet.

One of many few exceptions to this rule was Jimmy Buffett.

I don’t assume I ever met anybody as heat. He had no airs. One evening, Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent, and I have been out at dinner with him right here — he cherished to pump us for the most recent data — and an inebriated lady interrupted him and declared, “You’re not Jimmy Buffett!” With that euphoric smile that would gentle up an area, he pulled out his driver’s license for her.

Possibly he favored reporters as a result of he began as a journalist, writing for Billboard journal. He considered himself as a author — not solely of songs but additionally of best-selling books; he was certainly one of only a few to scale each the fiction and nonfiction lists at The Instances. It was greater than that, although. He was blessed with an irresistible Southern, devil-may-care appeal. Normally, joie de vivre is an indication you’re not paying consideration. However with Jimmy, it was ensorcelling. I went with him to Walter Reed medical heart when he sang for wounded Iraq and Afghanistan conflict veterans. He was capable of transport them to a seaside with no cares. In the course of the Covid years, he did “cabin fever Zooms” with well being care staff from throughout the nation who have been Parrotheads.

We each cherished pirates, mermaids, jukeboxes and the glamorous period of Pan Am flight attendants, and we constructed a friendship on these legendary objects. After I requested him when his birthday was, so I may ship him a Pan Am sweatshirt I’d discovered, he replied: “I’ll offer you a touch. Identical day because the child within the manger, however I used to be not born in a manger. I used to be born in Pascagoula.” As he was dying, stated his brother-in-law, the author Tom McGuane, he was speaking about going residence to Pascagoula, Miss.

His druggie previous was not one thing to emulate, though he stated he had no regrets. As he sang in “He Went to Paris,” “A few of it’s magic, a few of it’s tragic, however I had a superb life all the way in which.” However in a single sense at the very least, he was a mannequin for the way to dwell: Construct your life round what you like. When he was a younger scalawag, he discovered the Life Aquatic and conjured his artwork from it, making Key West the capital of Margaritaville. He didn’t waste away there; he spun a billion-dollar empire out of a shaker of salt. What could possibly be extra American than that?

Ultimately, having packed a thousand lifetimes into one, he was a mannequin for the way to die.

“Effectively, I’ve realized one factor from my newest in a collection of the ever-appearing pace bumps of life — 75 is NOT the brand new 50,” he emailed me. “Considering youthful doesn’t fairly do it. You continue to need to do the laborious work of, because the Toby Keith music says, ‘Don’t let the outdated man in.’ And that’s my job now, the way in which I see it.”

Some stars are such pure performers, they don’t look as if they’re working very laborious. Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe by no means gained Oscars. Jimmy was not garlanded with awards. He despatched me his ideas on that final April, on the event of “Margaritaville” being enshrined as “culturally vital” within the Library of Congress, sharing what he had advised Howard Cohen, a Miami Herald reporter.

Jimmy cherished the Library of Congress and visited it typically again within the days when he was engaged on a musical, “Don’t Cease the Carnival,” with Herman Wouk, holed up at Wouk’s home in Georgetown. (The musical had a short run in Miami in 1997.)

“I’ve at all times cherished books, studying and libraries, a present from my mom,” Jimmy stated. “The Library of Congress is a monumental treasure you don’t need to dig up; you simply stroll within the door of American historical past. ‘Margaritaville’ within the Library of Congress. I simply need to giggle, however with satisfaction. I haven’t obtained many awards in my career, however I’m OK with that. I believe the perfect reward for a performer is to please the viewers.”

He supplied the story of how he got here to put in writing his largest hit: “I began writing it on a serviette in a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, with a pal who was driving me to the airport, to fly residence to Key West. On the drive down the Keys, there was a fender bender on the Seven Mile Bridge, west of Marathon, and I used to be caught, overlooking Pigeon Key. I sat on the bridge for about an hour and completed the music there. That evening, I performed it for the primary time at my job at Loopy Ophelia’s on Duval Road. The small crowd within the bar requested me to play it once more. And I did. So, I suppose it’s a fairly good three-minute music that has stood the take a look at of time.”

He was well-read however unpretentious. After I advised him I used to be getting my grasp’s in English at Columbia College, he dryly requested, “Did ‘y’all’ ever make it into the English books?” Considered one of his favourite signoffs was “Let’s ketchup quickly.” I wrote to inform him a few course at Columbia on grammar and syntax referred to as The Comma Sutra. “I want it, and perhaps one on semicolons,” he replied. “Would that then be semicolonography? JB.”

A passionate Democrat — I met him by means of Caroline Kennedy — Jimmy despised Donald Trump however made positive his exhibits have been “an oasis” for followers of any political stripe.

Privately, he referred to the Trump period as “the Large Cheeto Follies” and advised me he hoped I used to be “having enjoyable sticking pins into the Trump voodoo doll.” Watching “My Octopus Instructor” on Netflix in the course of the pandemic, Jimmy famous — with an octopus emoji — that the inquisitive cephalopod within the movie was “manner smarter than Trump.”

Jimmy requested if the Trump impeachment for demanding a quid professional quo from Ukraine could be “the rotten piece of bait that lastly hooks this sleazy backside feeder? I hope so. Sensible folks appear to study from their errors and transfer on. One thing the underside feeder by no means obtained.”

When Trump trundled again into the sector in 2022, Jimmy recoiled: “He by no means found out that no present lasts without end, and it appears like this would be the final season, thank God.” At all times the optimist.

He wrote fortunately about “Uncle Joe”: “Appears to be like like I’m welcome again at this White Home. I’ve identified Joe a very long time, and his favourite music is ‘Come Monday.’ I’m honored. OK, solar’s up, and the wind is down. Off to surf. JB.”

His texts and emails got here from many locales in paradise — St. Barth’s, Sag Harbor, Palm Seashore, Paris and Cojímar, a small fishing village in Cuba.

However within the final couple of years, he typically wrote from much less unique locations, Boston and Houston, the place he was being handled for an aggressive type of pores and skin most cancers, Merkel cell carcinoma. (Was there a value for trademarking the solar? Even so, I guess he wouldn’t have modified a factor.) He stayed upbeat on the “juice,” as he referred to as his infusions to deal with the most cancers, and spoke proudly about his “all-female physician crew devoted to maintaining the outdated man out” on the street. He would say he needed to “go into the pits for some changes” and reassure me that he was getting “weller.” He referred to as it an irritation, a Southern fingernail on an English chalkboard.

He stated he was burrowing in at his Sag Harbor home along with his spouse, Janie, and his children and canines. His youthful sister, Laurie, who additionally was battling most cancers, got here round. He cherished having his band members over to play music, calling it “therapeutic to me.” He talked about binging on “The White Lotus” and despatched the titles of recent songs he was engaged on that have been so Jimmy: “Conch Fritters and Purple Wine,” “Fish Porn” and “My Gummy Simply Kicked In,” which featured a flip by his Hamptons pal Paul McCartney.

Jimmy urged me to maintain after the unhealthy guys. “Hold trolling on the market; as a longtime fisherman, I can say with some authority, you by no means know what’s going to wind up on the top of your rod. Fins up and see you quickly.”