With his expertise in the entertainment industry as a singer/songwriter, actor, documentary filmmaker, and record producer, it comes as a surprise to many when they learn that Jack Johnson, one of the kings of 21st-century beach pop/rock, was a former professional surfer. Are you surprised too? Yes, the Hawaiian-born surfer started chasing waves when he was a little boy, and by the age of seventeen, he was an outstanding and well-known athlete on the Banzai pipeline (surf reef break in Hawaii).
Johnson has always had an interest in things other than surfing – especially music and acting – and after suffering a very serious injury in his first professional surf competition, he began to focus more on his other talents and hobbies. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) with a B.A. in Film Studies in 1997, he switched to music full-time; in addition to singing, Jack also wrote songs, and his first five albums were big hits, all of which went platinum.
Jack Johnson Biography
Jack was born on May 18, 1975, in North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii. He attended Kahuku High School, Oahu, and later the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he received a degree in Film Studies in 1997. Jack Hody Johnson began as a surfer. Since he grew up in an area where surfing was widespread, it was normal for the boy to develop an interest in the sport. Jack started chasing the waves at the age of five.
At the age of 17, he was the youngest surfer to reach the finals of one of the most prestigious surf competitions at the North Shore of Oahu – Pipeline Masters. However, this was his last surfing event as a professional, which was due to a surfing accident he had during the competition, in which he had no less than one hundred and fifty 150 stitches on his forehead. In the accident, he also lost some of his teeth, which would later serve as inspiration for one of his songs – Drink The Water.
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Career
After a surfing accident ended his surfing career, Jack decided to find a career in the middle of his hobbies, he started with filmmaking and later with music. He learned to play the guitar at the age of eight and began developing his songwriting skills at twelve. During his studies, Jack Johnson collaborated with two of his friends (Emmett Malloy and Chris Malloy) to produce a surfing-based documentary called Thicker Than Water.
Not only did the documentary show Johnson’s talent as a director and songwriter (since most of the documentary’s soundtracks were his melodies), Surfer magazine named him Video of the Year. This also gave the impetus for Jack’s second surf flick called The September Sessions, and he began to get attention for most of his songs, one of which was covered by Pennsylvania alternative hip-hop band G. Love & Special Sauce on their 1999 album Philadelphia. He then came up with a demo that caught the attention of French producer J.P. Plunier. With Plunier’s help, he released his debut album in 2001 entitled Brushfire Fairytales.
Ben Harper had a cameo appearance on the album, which triggered a friendship between the two singers and led him to join Harper’s tour “Innocent Criminals” through the USA. Jack returned to the studio at the end of 2002, after having toured the country for the first half of the year, and the following year (2003) he released his second album – On and On. Although he had so many similarities to his first album, One and One was also a huge success.
Jack released five more albums between 2003 and 2017, In Between Dreams, which was released in 2005, two years after On and On, Sleep Through the Static came three years later (2008), To the Sea in 2010, From Here to Now to You in 2013 and his most recent album All the Light Above It Too was released in 2017.
His album In Between Dreams was at number 2 on the charts in 2005 and reappeared in 2013. Jack wrote the soundtrack Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the 2006 movie Curious George, which reached #1 on the Billboard 200 charts.
Jack Johnson’s Family: Wife (Kim Johnson), Children and Parents
Johnson is the son of the legendary surfer Jeff Johnson, which explains his love for the sea and waves from his earliest childhood. He is the youngest of his parents’ three children (all boys). His mother’s name is Patti Johnson.
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Jack Johnson is married to Kim Johnson since July 2000. The couple started dating back in college before they finally tied the knots. They have three children together (2 boys and a girl). The couple currently lives with their children on the north coast of the island of Oahu, Hawaii, but they rarely talk about their children and rarely disclose personal information and details about their children.
Johnson and Kim both founded the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation with the goal of supporting environmental courses and music arts and music education around the world. They are also the founders of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, through which he organizes concerts and music festivals to raise funds for causes they feel are important.
His Height and Lesser Known Facts
The singer stands at a height of 1.8 m (5ft 9 in).
Jack Johnson’s older brother Trent was the one who introduced him to music.
Trent was in a band, and Jack would sneak into his room and change and play the reverb of the guitar amp, and over time he learned to play the guitar on his own.
