They rocked Woodstock and grooved in ‘Grease.’ See them play in Anna Maria this weekend

Nothing about Sha Na Na’s rise to rock and roll fame was predictable.

Born out of an a capella ensemble at Columbia University that sang popular ‘50s tunes, the group eventually picked up instruments and took up the cause of keeping rock and roll alive.

Their timing was a little awkward for a straight up rock band — Sha Na Na debuted at the height of the late ‘60s folk and psychedelic craze.

That didn’t stop them from winning the ears of musicians like Jimi Hendrix and an honorary spot playing just before him at the close of Woodstock in 1969.

Humor may have helped, too. The band took the stage with greaser personas, gold lamé outfits and street attitude.

The shtick carried over into the TV spot that the band scored from 1977 to 1981.

Another crowning moment of the group’s career was starring in the film version of “Grease” as Johnny Casino and the Gamblers.

“Screamin” Scott Simon, the band’s keys player, co-wrote the song “Sandy” a week before John Travolta was filmed singing it in the iconic drive-in scene.

Today, Simon is one of three original members still in the band.

Combining the best aspects of parody and heartfelt tribute, Sha Na Na continues to spread rock and roll nostalgia at venues around the U.S.

They will stop at The Center of Anna Maria Island this Saturday.

Here are some highlights from our call with Simon ahead of the band’s show.

Simon joined the band while he was finishing up at Columbia University. They had just played Woodstock. Looking back, it was kind of a big deal.

(I joined) the next spring.

The Woodstock movie had come out, and these guys were on stage with Hendrix and The Who.

One of the guys in the band, whose pseudonym was Tony Santini, was in a poetry seminar with me. The class was on Tuesday afternoon, and he’d come back from the weekend wearing a Fillmore West t-shirt, because the band had been playing at The Fillmore West.

Ivy League rockers. What?

For me, it was a funny crossroads. The original piano player who played at Woodstock, and who was graduating college as I was in 1970, was a pre-med student. He was heading out the door to med school and gave the band notice, and they advertised in the student newspaper.

So it was a big deal to transition from Columbia University to the Fillmore.

That’s the difference between the Upper West Side and the Lower East Side in Manhattan.

The Columbia University students who formed Sha Na Na kept pursuing their degrees even as the band got popular. Schooling on week days and rocking on the weekends made for an interesting lifestyle.

College students who were matriculating would in fact plan their schedules around playing. The oldest guys were class of ‘70. And there were some class of ‘71 and class of ‘72. They were holding down a whole load academically with no classes on Fridays or Mondays and gigging on the weekend.

Even so, early in the career, we could only leave New York to do west coast stuff around Thanksgiving. So we habitually played the Fillmore West and later Winterland (Ballroom) as a Thanksgiving attraction. And we could only get a week away to come to LA to play the Whisky (a Go Go) and The Roxy (Theatre) on Easter vacation. And then summer vacation we’d tour England.

So at the outset it was a very strange package. I had graduated, so it was my full-time gig, but these other guys were still writing papers and taking finals. In the midst of rocking.

Simon is one of the few original members of the band who actually set out to be a musician. He studied modern English literature, poetry and music at Columbia University.

I was studying what I hoped to become, which was a musician and songwriter.

So it all showed up at the right time for me.

But there were two alternate career paths going on here. The guys that had come to the Ivy League to become academic — this was a hobby for them; this was a stunt.

Sha Na Na has had a lot of members over the years — 45, according to the band’s Wikipedia page. All of the originals got together recently.

47 years later, we actually played a show at Columbia as a part of alumni weekend of the class of ‘71. It included all the living, surviving guys who had played at Woodstock.

More than half of them left the group before the TV show started because they were going to be academics or lawyers or doctors.

Sha Na Na stuck out like a sore thumb at Woodstock. It turned out to be a good thing.

(Our music) was vocally oriented. It was completely opposite to everything else that was going on at the time. And so there was that niche that was filled.

Ironically, the guys who were the stars of Woodstock — whether it was Hendrix or Creedence (Clearwater Revival), or whoever — they were all in their mid to late 20s. Their music of the 50s was Tony Bennett, Jerry Gray and Patti Paige. By the time Elvis came along and all that, they were already in high school. We were just in third grade.

We were the next generation. It wasn’t quote “our music.” We were children of the ‘60s playing ‘50s music.

A trivia game created by Columbia students led to the creation of Sha Na Na.

This guy George Leonard was the older brother of the president of the glee club that was called The Kingsmen — it was a double octet — among the songs they sang were oldies. So they were very use to close harmony and doo-wop.

That dovetailed with the game that preceded Trivial Pursuit, called Trivia. It was invented by Ed Goodgold and Dan Carlinsky at Columbia University.

They had The Kingsmen come and sing “Little Darlin” at an international trivia contest.

The brother George said, I’ll get these gold suits from “Bye Bye Birdie” in the Broadway storage unit, and had this idea of choreographing these three guys in gold.

It got a huge response.

There were so many vocalists, you could do a Dion (DiMucci) song, a Little Anthony song, a Marcels group vocal.

And if you didn’t like the vocalist currently singing, there would be a new one in two minutes.

And it’s still that way. We’ve devolved numerically down to a seven-man show, but still everybody sings, everybody plays, everybody moves around the stage.

It’s an ensemble; it’s not about the star.

The band covers a lot of musical territory in a night.

We’ll do about 75 minutes, and in that time we’ll do 20 to 25 songs.

We’ve always had the philosophy: be true to the music. We’re not trying to improve upon the music. We’re not trying to make it our own. We’re trying to give it to you the way the record gave it to you. But then visually, we have fun and excitement and comedy and different things going on.

Weird coincidence:

John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are performing with the “Grease” movie in Tampa on the same night that we’re playing.

Details: 7 p.m. Saturday. The Center of Anna Maria Island, 407 Magnolia Ave., Anna Maria. $48-$68.

Info: manateeperformingartscenter.com.