I still can't believe he's gone, much less that it's been two whole years already. There have only been two singers who have affected my life and touched me as deeply as Jimmy Buffett did, with the other one being John Denver.
I remember hearing "Come Monday" when I was a teenager, but never paid much attention to it. Jimmy first came to my attention when I was in the Air Force and stationed at Taegu AB, South Korea. It was a Sunday afternoon and the base was dead quiet; pilots didn't fly on the weekend, so the flight line was just as dead as the main base (which was dead because everyone was still sleeping off the previous night's hangover). I was the Flight Chief and was driving around the flight line doing post checks, listening to AFKN (Armed Forces Korea Network, the ONLY English-speaking station in the country) on the radio in the Dodge truck assigned to the Flight Chief. Sunday was the day that AFKN played a newly-released album in its entirety without commercial interruption, and on that day they were playing the newest release by Jimmy Buffett called "Off To See The Lizard."
Halfway through the album I thought it was pretty damned good, and by the time the album finished I was hooked. I was a Jimmy Buffett fan, also known as a "Parrothead" as I would discover later.
The next morning I went to the Base Exchange to see what Jimmy Buffett albums they had in stock, and to my delight they had every single album he'd released up until that time in cassette form. (Hey, this was 1989, remember.) I bought them all, around eight or so, for a whopping $3 each. I spent the next few days listening to them both on and off duty, and the more I heard of his music the more I loved it. Like John Denver, he wasn't just a singer, he was a storyteller. And like Denver, each of his songs had a story, and to me this is the one thing that set him apart from all the others out there.
I finally got to see him in concert in February of 1999 thanks to my sister in law, Kim, when he played Madison Square Garden during his "Don't Stop The Carnival" tour. He was even better in person, and that concert was one of the best times of my life.
When he died two years ago, it felt like I had just lost a family member. There have only been 3 celebrities that I've cried over when they died; John Wayne, John Denver, and Jimmy Buffett.
And I'm not ashamed to say it.
Sail on, sailor. Bubbles up, Jimmy. We love you and miss you.
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