Lucy Buffett Recalls Brother Jimmy’s Advice — From Key West to His Final Words

MOBILE, Ala. — Three weeks before Mobile's National Maritime Museum of the Gulf opens its long-awaited exhibition on the life of Jimmy Buffett, his sister Lucy "LuLu" Buffett stood before a downtown crowd Thursday and revealed just how much of that life was shaped by her brother's advice.

Buffett was the featured guest at the latest installment of the museum's "Gulf Chats" series, speaking with moderator John Sledge, the museum's historian-in-residence, ahead of the Sept. 12 opening of "Jimmy Buffett: Son of a Son of a Sailor Experience." Museum executive director Karen Poth has said the 6,000-square-foot exhibition will showcase rare concert footage and career artifacts, including the 12-string Martin guitar Buffett used to write and perform "Son of a Son of a Sailor."

A geek with a trombone

Long before Jimmy Buffett became a global entertainment brand, he was, in his sister's telling, an unassuming middle child. Lucy Buffett, five years younger than sister Laurie and seven years younger than Jimmy, recalled him as a kind older sibling who often looked after her.

"My sister was the superstar," she told the audience. "I'm just letting y'all know that right now. And Jimmy was the geek." He played trombone in the school band and didn't pick up a guitar until years later, she said.

From a Junior League cookbook to Key West

Buffett, the author of two cookbooks and founder of LuLu's, which she said now operates three 500-seat restaurants across three states, spent much of the conversation tracing her culinary roots back to her family's Mobile upbringing. "I learned how to cook as a 17-year-old bride with a young child, out of the Jubilee cookbook," she said, referring to the community classic "Recipe Jubilee!" — "Mobile's Junior League cookbook," as she described it.

"And I learned how to make divine casserole and chocolate pound cake." It was her brother who pushed her toward the next chapter. When her first marriage ended, she said, Jimmy had a blunt suggestion. "He said, 'Boy, you're just being a little too wild. You need to go get your stuff together. You need to go to Key West to do that,'" she recalled. She took the advice, driving south with, as she put it, her two young daughters, a brand-new $50 vacuum cleaner and $100 in her pocket. "The greatest gift he ever gave me was making me go to Key West," she said. Describing the drive down A1A — now officially the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway — she said it permanently changed how she saw the world.

"I had never seen the color of that water before in my life. It was absolutely beautiful… I was 21 years old with two baby girls, and it was a place of freedom." She said the Key West of that era mixed "hippies and sailors and tourists and really good food," a scene she would later draw on when she returned to test recipes for her first cookbook.

A phone call that led to Hollywood

Jimmy Buffett's interventions in his sister's life didn't stop there. In the mid-1980s, she said, he called to tell her that a friend — actor Harrison Ford — was about to begin filming "Mosquito Coast" in Belize alongside Helen Mirren.

Jimmy had helped arrange for Ford to use the Mariner III, a 122-foot motor yacht built in 1926 and owned by a Mississippi Gulf Coast family known to the Buffetts, but the production reportedly wasn't satisfied with the boat's chef. "So Jimmy said, 'Well, my sister can cook,'" Buffett recalled. She interviewed with Ford at the Miami airport and got the job — one that stretched from an expected three weeks to three months. "And I became a deckhand. A deckhand and chef," she said, describing how she provisioned the boat with beef and vegetables sourced from Baldwin County as it sailed from Gulfport, Mississippi. She said Ford, his then-wife screenwriter Melissa Mathison, and Mirren were gracious to work for, though the job came with hard lessons about hospitality.

"What you have to always remember when you're in what's called service… is that whoever's hiring you, they're in charge," she said. "You can be friends for a minute, but you can't shoot tequila with them 'til two in the morning and sleep in. You're in charge of the breakfast."

Building LuLu's — and learning to let go

Jimmy Buffett later invested in LuLu's when his sister opened a small restaurant on Weeks Bay in Baldwin County, an early bet she said she still takes pride in having repaid. "Jimmy was quite the businessman," she said. "He didn't give you anything… He's definitely a good role model in terms of juggling a lot of business. Jimmy had a bandwidth wider than anybody I know, and he had very good business instincts." She said he also taught her not to dwell on ventures that failed. "Things that didn't work, he didn't care," she said. "He didn't bother. He just tried another thing."

His final advice: "Have fun"

As Jimmy Buffett's battle with skin cancer neared its end, Lucy Buffett was among the family members at his bedside. She said he had one last message for her. "He said, 'Come here, come here,'" she recalled. "And I couldn't understand what he was saying a little bit. And then he said, 'Have fun.'" "Because he knew that I'm sort of a grinder and a worker bee," she said.

"His message to me is, look, it's over sooner than you think. Go have some fun. You've done great. And that's the message I've taken." Nearly three years after her brother's death, Buffett said she's grateful for how the city of Mobile and the Maritime Museum have honored his legacy, and she plans to keep supporting the project. But she also framed the coming exhibition as something of a turning point.

"I've had an awesome time remembering because the people really loved him," she said, describing the many circles of people her brother touched — "his work families, his fishing family, his island family, his flying family, his real family, his billionaire family, his fishing-captain family… it was a shock for so many people." "I will continue to give my support to this museum," she said. "This is the one. I'm the closest [member of the family] here. I love that Mobile stepped up and did this… And so I'm now going to go live like Jimmy Buffett. I'm going to quit beating this drum." She said she may write another book — not a cookbook this time, but something different.

"I want to write a little book of sort of wisdom for my grandchildren," she said. "I think I want to do something like that."

What to expect at the exhibition

The "Son of a Son of a Sailor Experience" will include a recreation of Shrimp Boat Sound, Buffett's Key West recording studio, featuring personal items from the original space, along with video interviews with family members, bandmates, crew, friends and business associates. The museum previously shared that creative director Jim Stelluto and Poth traveled to Nashville to interview country star Kenny Chesney for the exhibit. "Creating the Jimmy Buffett Experience has been an absolute honor for our entire team," Poth said.

"We have spent nearly two years listening, researching, collecting stories, curating artifacts, and working to capture the remarkable life of a man who meant so much to so many people." "We didn't get far into this project before we realized this exhibition will never be a finished story," she added. "It is a living exhibit… Opening the doors on Sept. 12 is not the end of this journey; it is the beginning." Advance tickets for the exhibition are $19 for adults and $15 for youth, students, seniors and military personnel, including veterans, and can be ordered through the museum's website.

The museum is also selling tickets to a Sept. 11 "Margaritas & Memories" concert at the Mobile Saenger Theatre featuring longtime Buffett collaborators Mac McAnally and Scotty Emerick, with prices starting at $49.05 through Ticketmaster.

Buffett's Mobile Roots

Jimmy Buffett was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on Dec. 25, 1946, and grew up in Mobile, where he graduated from McGill Institute, now McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, in 1964. He died Sept. 1, 2023, at age 76, after a four-year battle with Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer.