I'll bet you didn't know,


that when I graduated from high school and moved to Denver, CO to go to Park's School of Business, I played honky-tonk piano with a "Shakey's Band!"

That's right ... to help put myself through school, I signed on with Shakey's Pizza parlor as a performer in their restaurants. Back in the day, every Shakey's had a "house band" consisting of a piano player, a banjo, and a lead singer. Sometimes, we had a drummer. We played on a little stage and entertained the folk that came for pizza.

We played songs like Baby Elephant Walk, Wall Street Rag, Has Anybody Seen My Gal, and a whole lot more. Obviously, there was no Gospel music in the program [grin]! If you ever went to a Shakey's in the 1970's, you will remember that there were nothing but picnic tables set up end to end and you wound up eating with other patrons of the restaurant.

I stuck thumbtacks in the piano hammers to give that old upright piano a "tinny" sound. We would travel on the weekends to other Shakey's locations that didn't have a band and we had a great time. It didn't pay much, but it was all the pizza you could eat for free!

Now ... I'll bet you didn't know that, did you?