On a vacation years ago we went to Belize and at a little bar there I heard his music singing about the island lifestyle with his "Cowboy Boots and Bathing Suits" album. Kind of a like a Jimmy Buffett vibe, and he and Jimmy Buffett were actually good friends. He would have a few days of jam sessions there in Belize that I wanted to attend but never made it to.

"Walker wrote “Mr. Bojangles” in the mid-1960s after a night in a New Orleans jail where he met a man who “danced a lick across the cell.” Walker released the song as the title track of a 1968 solo album, shortly after he left the New York band Circus Maximus. In 1971, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band took “Mr. Bojangles” to No. 9 on the pop charts. More than 100 other artists also recorded the song, including Bob Dylan, Sammy Davis Jr., Nina Simone and Neil Diamond.

Singer-songwriter Todd Snider, a longtime friend of Walker’s, has often told the story of walking through Santa Fe, N.M., with Walker one night when they happened upon an apparently homeless musician performing “Mr. Bojangles” on the street. In Snider’s 2014 book “I Never Met a Story I Didn’t Like,” he revisited the encounter:

“I was asking myself, ’Should I tell this guy that he’s playing Jerry Jeff’s song, and that Jerry Jeff is standing right here? But, no, I figured that if Jerry Jeff wanted to let this guy know who he was, he’d tell him. When the song was over, (Walker) said, ‘That sounded great,’ and then he put a (expletive)-load of cash — every bit of cash he had on him — into that guy’s hat.”

His recording career spanned 51 years and he released 36 albums, including compilations. He became known as a mentor to musicians such as Garth Brooks, Jimmy Buffet, Guy Clark, Todd Snider and Lucinda Williams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfAqP_3oNn8