The Jake Lives Band performs in Belleville last month.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Shakey Jake may be gone, but he's not forgotten, particularly by Dan “Dahsoulman” Carter & The Jakes Lives Band, a new musical group with a name that pays homage to the late Ann Arbor personality.

Jake Woods, a much-loved fixture on downtown streets for more than three decades, died Sept.16, 2007, at the age of 82. Clad in his familiar three-piece suit, floppy hat, white leather shoes and plastic sunglasses, he could often be seen playing his version of the blues on a guitar that was often out of tune and sometimes had only one or two strings.

Carter described his group’s mix of cover tunes and a few originals as “sort of a Morris Day & The Time meets the Black Eyed Peas, with lead vocal stylings between Sam Cooke and Steve Perry.”

A show at the Bistro Bar and Grill Saturday will mark the band’s local debut.

“I dress like him, we’ve got a song that we wrote, “Jake Lives,” that's the band’s theme song. It's a slow, grooving tune that everybody loves,” Carter said. “And I take a moment to talk about him, what he meant to Ann Arbor, what he meant to me.”

Although Carter acknowledged that Woods’ music was, well … less than musical, he said he was drawn by Woods’ outsize personality and zest for life.

“I came from St. Louis to Michigan when I was 13 … I didn’t grow up with a strong man figure around ... As a teenager, I’d occasionally ride my bike down to Ann Arbor and run across Shakey Jake, I’d see him on the buses and so forth. I noticed a lot of the kids made fun of him and laughed at him, but I thought he was interesting, with those crazy clothes he’d wear, with all those colors. I don’t know if it was the artist in me, but I found it kind of intriguing. And then even more so when he’d take time to speak to me, say positive things to me about staying in school, and focus on making things happen. I’ll never forget that.

“If you knew Shakey Jake, you knew he wasn’t too happy with the young kids walking around with their shorts down to their knees and so forth,” Carter added. “Now that I’m an adult, I see he saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. … His zest for life, his passion and his energy and his love for people, his uniqueness — we want to incorporate all of that in our band.”

Although the specifics of the band are still coming together, by the time of the Bistro show Carter promises three backup singers, a drummer, a guitarist and perhaps a keyboard player. He said Al Green, Barry White, The Temptations, Journey, BB King and The Time are among groups Dan “Dahsoulman” Carter & The Jakes Lives Band covers. Carter also said there are plans to work more originals into the musical mix as time passes, and to even record a CD.

Carter, who now lives in Belleville, has long been involved in music. He attended Huron High School, where he sang in the choir. He went on to win several area singing competitions and was chosen four years ago to represent the State of Michigan in a national karaoke competition in Las Vegas. He beat out 38 of the best in Michigan, and then moved on to nationals, where he finished in second place out of 40,000 acts across the U.S .who auditioned. He often sings with the choir at Victorious Life church in Ypsilanti and has sung with the Detroit-based wedding band Chateau for the last six years.

He met Ypsilanti resident Hank Davis, who also sings in the group, 20 years ago when they were performing at a wedding. Davis also has fond memories of Shakey Jake.

“I had, on occasion, run into Jake on the bus,” Davis recalled. “He would come in with all of his baggage and you knew Jake was in the place. … He didn’t have the talent a lot of us were blessed with but he always had CDs or tapes that had his music on them and he would let me have one.

“The greatest thing I remember about Jake wasn’t even Jake himself. I walked into a store in Ann Arbor and there was this door poster of him with his guitar. He really was a living icon. A piece of Ann Arbor died when Jake died.”

Besides serving as an introduction to the band, Carter and Davis said the concert is also meant to help raise autism awareness in the area. Both men have family members who have been touched by the disease.

“We’re in the process of putting together some kind of raffle so we can raise money to donate to the Autism Society,” Davis said.


Roger LeLievre is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com.