I remember the first time I saw Shakey Jake Woods (he actually signed things "Shakin’ Jake," but common usage will always make him Shakey) – it was at my alma mater, Kenyon College in tiny Gambier, Ohio. On my hallway was a kid from Ann Arbor (the son of Ann Arbor’s most famous polluter, but that’s another story) who had the iconic Shakey Jake poster on his wall. While I pursued my various derangements of the senses I used to study that poster, trying to figure out exactly who it could be, this gentleman in the broad brimmed lady’s hat tied under his chin with a red ribbon, white plastic sunglasses, cheap blue suit and big bow tie, with white carnations on both lapels, a flowered scarf and a long string of pearls around his neck, large rings on most fingers, and holding a guitar upsidedown, strumming, his other hand not even attempting to make a chord. The guy from Ann Arbor wasn’t much help, merely giggling that he was this weird black guy who went around town playing his guitar badly for change. Little did I know that years later I would move to Ann Arbor and come to know Shakey Jake.
Once when I was working at Borders a while ago Shakey Jake came in and a girl there by the name of Nicole Pinsky, said "I’d like to kick him right in the teeth." Why, I wondered, would a person who had known nothing but privilege her whole life, the daughter of a future Poet Laureate of the United States, want to kick a harmless old black man in the teeth, and express her desire so proudly and publicly? It seems that at that time there was a rumor that Jake was in fact an immensely wealthy slum lord who was shamming homelessness to add to his already enormous coffers. Ms. Pinsky felt that Jake was betraying the true homeless and that she would be merely expressing her sincere compassion for the downtrodden by violently applying her expensive footwear to his face. Of course that rumor wasn’t true – Jake never pretended to be homeless, but he was far from wealthy, and he pretty much eked out the same bare bones existence as any member of the working poor.
Let’s be charitable and say that Generation X, the children of Reagan, just didn’t get Jake. He’s definitely more of a sixties thing. It was the fashion then to dig up old blues men with funny names like Blind Lemon Jefferson or Sonny Boy Williamson who had been popular in the thirties and forties with black audiences, then gone out of style and slipped into obscurity, and bring them back to young white audiences who had been schooled in the blues by white groups so influenced by the old school. It answered that decade’s desire for authenticity (remember that?) and served as a way for the new groups to repay the enormous musical debt they owed their predecessors. Shakey Jake fit into this mold, wandering the streets, playing his guitar, singing – but here was the joke many didn’t get – he couldn’t sing, play or write songs very well. I relate it to another current of the sixties, conceptual art, the happening and Andy Warhol. Jake was famous for being famous, and made a living selling postcards, bumper stickers, posters and unlistenable recording of himself. How brilliant is that, how ironic and post modern.
In person Jake was far from ironic. He had his iconic phrase Movin’ On, and he lived by it, pushing himself day after day to hit the next street corner or go to the next place, to keep moving, in what was, after all, an inspirational embrace of life. After I started my store he soon learned I was a soft touch who would buy the unsold products he had when he was ready to go home, and would also call him a cab to get him there, talking until it arrived. Sometimes with his repeated trademark phrases, his road runner Beep Beep and occasional nonsensical statements, I’d think he was just totally off his beam, but then he’d snap back and ask me how my kids and wife were, remembering the things I’d told him about myself with much more acuity than the average customer. He liked to talk about the meal he was going to have when he got home, and quiz me on what my wife was going to make me, always telling me how lucky I was to have dinner waiting for me on the table. I loved the way he would always be just Jake, himself, telling my customers he was a hundred and five oh, yeah, even when they’d try and "communicate" earnestly with him – "Come on, Jake, seriously, how old are you?" A hundred and five, oh, yeah.
Thanks to Carol at Peaceable Kingdom, his life became much more regular in his final years, and he even got cable television which he enjoyed immensely. Instead of staying out all day, he’d start retreating back to his apartment in the afternoon, to the microwave and T.V. Added to his repertoire of expressions lately was a loud groan followed by Whatta life, whatta life, and it wasn’t hard to tell that his boundless energy was at long last ebbing. He moved to a place closer to downtown recently, so, relieved of taxi duty, I didn’t see him that much. People would come in and notice all my Jake stuff and ask "Is he still alive?" and I used to be able to say, "Hell, yeah, I saw him on Liberty and Main this morning," but the last few months I hadn’t seen him anywhere, so I’d just say "I suppose so. I’m assuming that if he died they’d have something about it in the newspaper." It took them a couple of days but they did.
I always likened him to the Eiffel Tower, a landmark that was totally useless, slightly ridiculous, but which had been around for so long that it became a largely beloved part of the landscape, a unique symbol of the town. There was something mythic about Jake, the stuff of urban legend. One person would tell you that he’d been in Ann Arbor, just as old as he appeared today, when they were in college in 1962, or another would tell you that he was actually from their home town in Florida or Georgia, the next person telling you something else. If the Pope ever considers him for sainthood I will testify to this miracle – one day while we were driving to the store my kids and I saw Jake on the sidewalk downtown only to find him already there, waiting for us when we arrived at Meijer. In this homogenized increasingly pitiless and colorless world, where every expression of self becomes just another marketing ploy, I’ve always prized anyone who expressed honest originality and vitality, who dared to be different. Shakey Jake Woods was one of those people, Ann Arbor’s own landmark. A character like Jake is what gives a place character, and a world deprived of the opportunity of running into him is already a much duller place.
