SAN DIEGO — Jimmy Buffett, who died Friday at 76 following a four-year battle with Merkel skin cancer, knew exactly what accounted for his decades of success. "I'm not a great singer, and I'm not a great guitar player. But I'm a good entertainer," the Mississippi-born Buffett said in an in-depth interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2000. (All the quotes in this appreciation are from Union-Tribune interviews with Buffett conducted between 1991 and 2017.) Buffett's tropical-flavored songs, starting with his 1977 breakthrough hit, "Margaritaville," were direct, simple and free of even a ...