[Rumori] Shakin Jake Woods moving on

[Ed Special]

I met Jake around 1973 here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Standing on the corner of State and William streets, playing his guitar.
I often heard him say "On the move"
Are you saying "on the moon" or "on the move" I asked.
He said "Gotta have both of 'em"

There will be a memorial service at 1 PM Sunday, Sept. 23 at MUEHLIG  
FUNERAL CHAPEL 403 S 4TH AVE at William, Ann Arbor, MI

http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2007/09/ 
shaky_jake_dies_sunday_at_the.html
http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2007/09/shaky_jake.html

http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/apr/04-09-98/arts/arts5.html


WCBN DJ John Griffin puts it nicely:
Posted by jgriffin4 on 09/18/07 at 2:56PM

  There are few individuals in Ann Arbor's history that can truly claim  
the title of "Legend". Fewer can even begin to become a part of the  
story of their city in a way that they become one of its most  
recognizable landmarks, become a symbol for what that city embodies. On  
Sunday night, we lost one of those people: Mr. Jake Woods also known as  
Shakin' Jake or Shakey Jake.


  Jake was one of those characters who had become a fixture on the  
streets of Ann Arbor, a sign post that marks the boundaries of where  
that city begins and ends. For countless years, Jake has been a symbol  
of an Ann Arbor that is slowly passing, and with his death, that era  
which he is a part of has also slipped a bit further away. It was a  
different time in Ann Arbor's history, as anyone who lived here over  
the past few decades can attest to. All things must pass and with the  
passing of Jake, I have little doubt that the fabric of Ann Arbor will  
ever be the same.

  I had a couple opportunities to interview Jake over the years and had  
become somewhat well acquainted with him as a result. I say somewhat  
because not many people knew the real Shakin' Jake. He referred to  
himself once as a "lone wolf", and this was hardly an exaggeration in  
some ways. Jake gave much of himself by becoming such a public figure.  
Only he knows how many times a stranger came up to him on the street,  
calling out to Jake as if they knew him personally, but he was always  
seemingly willing to play along. Jake became someone we all knew, he  
was a fixture, a face that we recognized as someone who was a part of  
our city's identity. Sometimes, it is hard to remember that even  
celebrities have "real lives" too, and from what I know, very few ever  
got that close to knowing the "real" Jake Woods.

  I had my first run-ins with Jake when I was working at Diag Party  
Store where he would go to play the lottery each day. We developed a  
rapport and after awhile I convinced him to come on down and play some  
songs on my radio show on WCBN. Although I knew somewhat of what I was  
in store for, I was so blown away by him that it is still one of my  
all-time favorite broadcasts.

  Jake arrived shortly before 3:30pm and sauntered into the dark studio,  
banging his guitar case as he came along. After getting him set up with  
a microphone for his guitar and one for his voice, we came up on the  
air and I introduced the "legendary guitarist". There is no tuning up,  
well, if you know Jake, it sounds like he is out of tune, but he does  
in fact set it to whatever sounds good to him it seemed. After greeting  
the good people of Ann Arbor he kicked into his first tune, "Baby  
Love", followed up with "State Street Boogie" before I got him to play  
his "favorite" song "Hippy Boy Riding the Sand".

  Jake was a musician in the old tradition of the folk storyteller. He  
was not someone who minded muddying the truth with fiction and within  
these tales usually came some sort of moral of the story. There was no  
distinction between the man and the musician, Jake was always in  
character, even when he wasn't on stage. He was a remnant of an era  
when African-Americans were show-men; the post-minstrel era when they  
were not taken seriously and there had to be an element of that comical  
fool in how they delivered their act. Jake was funny. Maybe he didn't  
know it, but he was sharp enough to know when you were laughing at him  
instead of with him. His songs were very simple, albeit every song  
musically sounded the same as he banged on the worn strings, his  
battered hollow-body emitting a cacophony of conflicting tones.

Instead, his strength was in the lyrics, the stories which he would  
tell. His stories were often made up right there on the spot, though he  
did have a few songs which he could do a mangled version of if you  
called out one from his catalog of balads. David Alan Grier, the  
comedian who would go on to star in the TV show "In Living Color", was  
in fact well-acquainted with Jake from his days at the University of  
Michigan and based a character on the show upon Jake. "Calhoun Tubbs",  
as he was known, was an old bluesman and if someone would get him to  
start talking, he would always relate how he had a song about whatever  
the topic of the moment was. "Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it?  
Here it goes!" as he beat out the same blues riff over and over again.

Jake was a fixture for as far back as most can recall. He once sold me  
a videotape of segments from various TV appearances over the years and  
on it is a clip of him from what appears to be the late 70's early 80's  
watching a band play over by South Quad. During the clip, he is seen to  
be dancing around like a maniac, grabbing young women in the crowd  
unexpectedly and twirling them around like during the dance crazes of  
the dancehall days. This was a far cry from the slowly shuffling Jake  
who slowly made his way down the street, sometimes incoherently  
responding to anyone who called out his name.

He was hard to miss, with his trademark sunglasses and floppy hats, his  
bow ties and dirty suits, his battered guitar case being dragged along  
with him wherever the road ahead of him led. You'd see him down on  
Liberty and Main a lot of the times, sometimes playing his guitar,  
other times just kicking back at a table at Kilwin's. I'd always stop  
to say "Hi", sometimes talk for a few minutes to see what he would say.  
Amazingly, for someone who everyone thought was so mentally ill, he was  
relatively sharp and always seemed to recall any details of any stories  
I told him with amazing clarity. Overall, I knew that I was not going  
to meet many people like him in my life and so I tried to learn as much  
as I could about him, trying to savor every wild story as we smoked our  
cigarettes on whatever corner I'd find him on.

I learned of his penchant for telling stories during that first  
interview at WCBN. Usually when I had to interview the guests on my  
show, it would end up being quite tedious and uninteresting, but not  
Jake. We jumped from topic to topic, talking about his songs and his  
career as a musician. After awhile I learned to let Jake control where  
the conversation was going and was rewarded with some of the most  
amazing stories I have ever heard, even if none of them were factual.

I tried to get a better idea of his life's story and so he began to  
invent a mythical background, one that I knew he had told before but  
probably in different forms, as all good stories of the oral tradition  
go. He was born on October 31, 1900 in Arkansas and his mother called  
him Shakin Jake because he always kept moving. This led to how he was  
supposed to be "born a midget" but when the doctor left the room, he  
grew six inches, which a few second later was exaggerated into nine  
inches: the classic example of the "fish-tale". Eventually he moved to  
New Orleans and at some point began playing the blues when some U of M  
students, who had heard of him, brought Jake back to Ann Arbor. Upon  
his arrival he was met by a parade of people and the Mayor who  
convinced him to stay, and so he did. While it is now well-known that  
this story is a fabrication, he was not shy from blending truth and  
fiction, and in some ways it served to sever himself from whatever his  
past may have been, while providing a legend that only served to  
aggrandize his mythical status.

Jake had a "TV set in every room in his house", wrote "Swing Low Sweet  
Chariot", saw snakes that were 15 feet long one minute, and then 30  
feet long a few seconds later into the tale, and claimed to have been  
with "every woman in the world...and three men".

Again: where does the line between truth and fiction lie?


  With Jake it didn't matter. I'm sure that he always felt that the  
spotlight was on and so he was always expected to perform. He was  
always larger than life, as KISS would put it. Who knows if he was that  
character, if he was really was that person that he created. Did he  
believe what he was saying too? One has to wonder if he was oblivious  
to his lack of talent or if he actually knew that his guitar was out of  
tune. Was he completely unaware of what he really sounded like or was  
he secretly laughing at us? I don't think that there are too many  
musicians out there who are as popular as Jake is, who have no clue how  
to tune their guitars. He is an anomaly in that sense.

Beyond all this, Jake was a human being just like us all. He was a  
colorful, interesting and unique character; one that seldom comes  
around in our lifetimes. Along with the end of an era is the passing of  
a man who most of us never really knew, but was someone who we all  
knew. In a time when people strive to be homogenized and identical, who  
take themselves way too seriously and are wrapped up in how are they  
are perceived by their peers, people like Jake are truly rare. Not only  
did he sing his songs and tell his jokes, but he tried to help people  
by offering advice, even when the advice made no sense. His gift was  
that he was someone who made us smile, someone who gave away his  
private self and became ours. Few people give of themselves in that way  
nowadays, and even fewer do it as flamboyantly or as inimitably as Jake  
did.

I'm gonna miss him.


On Friday John Griffin will be guest-host for about an hour on the  
Tight Pants show, where he will be doing a Shakey Jake tribute  
including an interview he recorded a few years ago. That starts at  
around 3 PM and then by 4 or so we should be back to regular Tight  
Pants programming
http://www.wcbn.org/listen.html

================

  Review for AMG ["On The Move" CD]  by arwulf arwulf

  Seasoned citizens of Ann Arbor, Michigan know Shakin Jake Woods as an  
ever-vigilant presence along the main thoroughfares of the city. A few  
might even remember Jake's appearance at the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues &  
Jazz Festival. Wearing a snowy white suit with a carefully folded pink  
terry cloth towel over one shoulder, Jake sang "Baby Love" from  
on-stage -- not the "Baby Love" associated with the Supremes, but his  
own potent invention. Dr. Ed Special has now produced the definitive  
Shakin Jake album, obtainable from Jake himself on the street. Back in  
'73, Jake's voice was much deeper, and his booming "haw haw haw!" could  
be heard from far away. Over the years the voice became a bit higher  
and more like a stage whisper. The performances on this disc were  
recorded at the studios of WCBN FM, engineered by Charlie White in  
December of 1977, and by Dan Gunning in March of 1978. Presiding as a  
one-man vaudeville revue, Jake interrupts each of his songs in order to  
tell a joke, then finishes with a flourish. His "jokes" are actually  
surrealistic folk tales of great cosmic import. Standard characters in  
Jake's jokes are the Signifying Monkey, the Three Wise Men, the  
Alligator, the Goat, God, and the Devil. We know these are jokes  
because he introduces them as jokes and laughs loudly in a shrill voice  
after each joke is told -- while singing his out-chorus. Jake uses two  
chords on the guitar: open and closed, either clamping the strings with  
his entire hand or strumming without holding on to any strings  
whatsoever. This actually works really well, and he's damned good at  
it. He chugs away hypnotically -- a bit like early John Lee Hooker --  
only even more percussive and a whole lot grittier, perfectly in tune  
with himself according to his own system. Some of Jake's words bring to  
mind Captain Beefheart ("Pink Spare Woman") or Blind Willie Johnson  
(&"The Devil Song.") He preaches like Rev. Gary Davis and gives good  
advice as though addressing a roomful of grandchildren. He recounts in  
detail his act of valor in rescuing a girl from a burning building, and  
cheerfully explains how, on another occasion, he outran the wind.  
Forget how you think music or language is supposed to sound. These 30  
brief tracks taken consecutively may result in a complete reassessment  
of reality as we know it.

===============

Here is more Jake on WFMU's Beware of the Blog
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/06/on_the_move_mp3.html



"The whole world's gonna miss me" - Jake Woods


Ed