Sherwood Johnson

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sherwood “Shakey” Johnson (September 2, 1925 – October 31, 1998) was an American who loved jazz and started Shakey’s Pizza in 1954. He was born in Sacramento, California, the son of a deputy attorney general. After high school, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he earned the nickname “Shakey.” He studied at Sacramento City College and Hastings College of Law, and married Mary Jane Williams in 1950. In 1954 he opened Shakey’s Pizza with Big Ed Plummer, running it with attention to good food, clever signs, and nightly jazz music. The restaurant’s music was jazz-focused, often Dixieland or ragtime. He was named “Emperor of Jazz” at Sacramento’s first Jazz Jubilee. Around 1960 he contracted polio and walked with a limp thereafter. In 1966 he sold his stake in Shakey’s for about $3 million and retired to a ranch in Oregon House, California, where he continued to support jazz. He was inducted into the Banjo Hall of Fame for promoting banjo music in his pizza parlors. He died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 73.