Ann Arbor’s sagacious street celebrity “Shakey Jake” died Sunday at the age of 82. And I would be remiss if I did not mention his death, or his life, on this site. It’s not that the death of a seemingly homeless old man who wore a pimp suit that few of you know about is big news. But rather you deserve to know the story of Shakey Jake Woods, a vagabond minstrel, a benevolent bum and a permanent fixture of America’s preeminent college town for the last 34 years. I saw Shaky Jake for the first time on a college visit at the University of Michigan. As my aunt, an alum, took me around the campus, she stopped and pointed out an older black man wearing a pimp suit, sunglasses and a fedora holding a guitar case. In the same voice she used to point out the Diag, the bell tower and U of M’s other landmarks, she smiled and said, “That’s Shakey Jake. He was here when I was here.” My aunt is in her 50s. By my calculations, Shakey Jake has encountered well over 300,000 Michigan students during his time there and like the Diag and the bell tower, he has became part of the Ann Arbor landscape, part of the college experience. And while Shakey’s persona would certainly not be welcome in most American towns, his warmth and willingness to talk to students was always welcome in Ann Arbor, a town that truly embraces eccentricity. Shakey Jake was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1925 and moved to Saginaw, Michigan when he was a kid. So he says. He also said he was 104 years old and had a dozen bodyguards watching out for him around the clock. He never went to school and never learned to read, according to his obituary in the Ann Arbor News. He came to Ann Arbor in 1973 to perform in the town’s blues festival. As legend has it, he was a big hit with the crowd and never left. Since then, he played guitar all over Ann Arbor, sold t-shirts and CDs and dined in various Ann Arbor eateries. And despite his appearance, Shakey Jake was not homeless. He lived off his social security checks, staying in low-income senior housing and taking cabs into town every morning. He had friends who took and read messages for him, restaurant owners who treated him to meals and coffee and students who called out his name everywhere he went. He referred to Ann Arbor as his “playhouse.” Over the years, he became a symbol of one of America’s greatest towns, always friendly and always on the move, living proof that in this world, you can crazily roam around a college town for over three decades and still be mourned, celebrated and even eulogized. For the generations of Michigan students used to seeing Shakey Jake around town, there will surely be something missing from your next visit to Ann Arbor.

•AA News: Shakey Jake Dies at 82
•Video: ‘Shakey Jake Woods: On the Move’

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