The name Sailor Jerry means different things to a lot of people. To some, it’s rum. To some, it’s a nautical sense of nostalgia with pin-up tattoos and rough ‘n tumble sailors stationed in Hawaii. The Sailor Jerry tattoo story runs incredibly deep and carries a rich history of renaissance featuring a colorful character that would tip the scales in new tattoo traditions. The world of tattooing was forever changed because of Norman Keith Collins, aka Sailor Jerry. Many view him as a hard-edged sailor with a knack for tattoos, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
He was a man of many hats. An inventor, a passionate artist, a soldier, a sailor, a mentor, a nighttime radio talk show host, a visionary, and a spirited individual full of spit and vinegar right to the end. So, beyond the pin-up hula girls that you see on rum bottles, who was Sailor Jerry? Well, what better place than to start at the beginning?
The Beginning of the Sailor Jerry Tattoo Story
Sailor Jerry Collins wasn’t always a sailor or master tattoo artist. He started life in a time where it wasn’t uncommon for young teens to hop train cars and travel the countryside on a whim. From his birth-town in Reno, Nevada, Norman Keith Collins hopped trains all the way to the Great Lakes while picking up interest in tattooing along the way. He started out with using whatever ink and needles he could find to handpoke tattoos with.
He eventually ended up in Chicago, where he crossed paths with a local tattoo artist, Tatts Thomas, who quickly took Jerry under his wing and became his first real teacher in tattoos. Tatts introduced Jerry to tattoo machines and molded his foundational knowledge of the art. The practical jokes and teachings of Tatts got the ball rolling that would wind up catapulting Jerry’s journey in tattooing. Jerry would soon hone the skills of mastering American Traditional tattoos and took the art seriously to the point he was extremely selective on who he was willing to share his knowledge and designs with.
When Travels and War Lead to Finding “Home”
Norman Keith Collins had a taste for the sea and ended up joining the Navy after sailing through the Great Lakes and yet again set off on more adventures. He would sail around the world and see a large chunk of Asia which sparked some inspiration in Jerry - although, that’s a point we’ll get to in a minute. He ended up in Hawaii and quickly fell in love. A place that was full of rough and tumble folks, the chaos of WWII, and of course, an action packed spot in the middle of the sea that he loved so much.
He’d tattoo in-between his military duties and eventually opened up a shop on Hotel Street. This spot was smack in the middle of where sailors would flock for various activities that would make most people blush these days. It was a bit of a lawless land with drugs, sex, alcohol and, of course, tattoos. A unique environment that Jerry seemed to thrive in. Jerry was over six feet tall, didn’t take lip from anyone, and quickly became a staple of the Hotel Street experience. He loved causing trouble, playing jokes, and was overall just untamed. The true definition of a free spirit.
After some time, he would decide to open up a shop named Sailor Jerry Tattoo at 1033 Smith Street. Basically a tiny little dive that had about enough space for two stations, but it was perfect for Jerry. It’s where he really made his mark.
Traditional Japanese Tattoo and the Influence it had on Today’s Tattooing
Jerry obviously made quite a few friends along the way; however, there were plenty of folks that ruffled his feathers that he enjoyed ruffling right back. You see, Jerry had a bit of a competitive streak. As a very patriotic man that was extremely confident in his craft, he decided that he wanted to take what he learned of Japanese art and do it better. “Beat them at their own game”, according to Ed Hardy, one of his apprentices and good friends. He even decided to give himself the honorific of “Hori Smoku.” Which was bestowed with the inside joke of sounding like “Holy Smokes.” He had admiration for those that taught him, but the competitive nature still spurred his typical jokester personality.
Jerry studied Traditional Japanese tattoo masters and spawned a relationship with Kazuo Oguri, learning how to execute the traditional styles correctly. Then, he fused it with his own style that was developed over his years of doing American Traditional tattoos to create a brand new style that heavily influenced what we see in tattooing today. The Japanese focused on large, fluidly themed body work and considered these body suits to be one tattoo. Whereas, American Traditional is smaller, single patch style imagery that is meant to individually express an emotion on its own. Together though? It was a revolutionary style that nobody had seen before, and tattoo fanatics could not get enough. He began to push the boundaries of Japanese large body compositions with American imagery and color.
Jerry figured out how to combine the two techniques to create large scale, blended works, with American topics. It’s how we ended up with all of the different sleeves, chest pieces, back pieces, and fluid, full-bodied works that so many individuals get today. Though many of the designs we see from artists today don’t look like traditional Sailor Jerry tattoos, the movement he started with his creations tipped the scales in a completely different direction in the tattoo world. It opened a door that never closed.
It was what sparked the inspiration of and relationships with people like Mike Malone, Ed Hardy, and Zeke Owen. These three men were such staples in Jerry’s life that before he passed in 1973, he said that one of them had to take over his tattoo shop or burn it to the ground because he didn’t trust anyone else with it. Ed Hardy was knee deep in learning tattooing in Japan at the time and Zeke was elsewhere as well, but Mike Malone gladly took over and made sure the Sailor Jerry Tattoo legacy lived on.
More Than Just an Artist
It’s pretty obvious that Jerry was an incredibly passionate artist, but there’s a lot more to the man than a big personality and some ink. He created tattoo machines that rivaled the old-school rotary machines to get better results and go easier on the skin. He invented the Mag shader that was more like a japanese needle configuration than that of the rounds the rest of the world was using.
He also took up his own late-night talk radio show where he’d get on the radio, take calls, and go into deep conversations on things like politics and current issues. He may have had a considerably colorful and brash vocabulary when he was in the shop, but on the radio, he was a whole different personality. He actually had a fantastic voice for radio and there are still clips floating around where you can hear it for yourself. The Old Ironsides Radio Show has actually inspired several podcasts that are in circulation today.
Jerry was also one of the first to start the push for hygiene and sterilization of tools in tattoo shops. He viewed cleanliness as a high priority and was a major influence on the standards that tattoo shops now hold for keeping clean and avoiding the spread of infections. In the early years of tattooing in America, especially in the military, tattoo artists would often reuse needles from client to client and the shops were typically pretty dingy places. So, it wasn’t uncommon to see people walking around with gnarly looking half-healed tattoos that were gunky and irritated from whatever bacteria and germs were transferred during their session from the last person in the chair. Gross right? Jerry thought so too.
The Purple Ink War
Something that most people today don’t know is that there is a reason American Traditional and early tattoos had the same core colors of black, red, yellow, and green. One color that everybody wanted but nobody had was purple. Jerry saw this as an opportunity to yet again make a mark on the tattoo industry. He was the first to call color companies to create a purple that would hold, stay, and heal beautifully.
There was a specific artist named Lou Norman that Jerry had quite the vendetta for, and it motivated him to actually create a purple ink. Jerry went out of his way to work with a lab to create purple out of spite. It wasn’t a huge headliner, but it was just the type of thing Jerry would do to prove he was the best of the best.
He only used purple for folks he liked, but there was one day that he tattooed a dragon on a guy and actually told him to go on into Lou’s shop and ask for a purple dragon. When Lou said they don’t have purple because “nobody has purple”, the guy rolled up his sleeve to reveal the purple dragon and rubbed it in his face that Jerry did it. It even went as far as Jerry sending purple orchids to Lou in the hospital to remind him that Jerry still knew he had won that argument.
“Romeo”
Romeo and The Aloha Monkey Tattoo
Mike Malone relocated to Minnesota and opened The Aloha Monkey Tattoo Shop in Burnsville, Minnesota and eventually handed the reins to his mentee, Josh Arment. When you visit the shop, the first thing many notice is the logo of a monkey mooning you with the “O” in “Aloha” cleverly winking at you. This logo actually has a rich history of its own. Which, since we’re still talking about Sailor Jerry, it’s no surprise that there’s a colorful history to a shop that was started by one of his best students.
The monkey featured in the logo was actually drawn by Sailor Jerry and, of course, has a whole story in itself. The monkey depicted in the image was actually the inspiration in quite a few of Jerry’s works and his name was Romeo. Romeo was a monkey that Jerry brought back from his adventures in Asia as a merchant marine, much like many other sailors that followed the trend of the times where they’d find exotic animals and bring them back as pets. Romeo was known for mooning his clients and a number of other antics.
Now, keep in mind this was a very different time because this next part is a little unconventional. Jerry and one of his partners decided that Romeo’s greeting “moons” needed a little flare. So in true Jerry fashion, he tattooed “AL” and “HA” on either side of Romeo’s butt to greet the customers with his “ALOHA.” The story is both outlandish and true, so it sparked the inspiration for the name that Mike Malone dubbed his new tattoo shop.
At the time, tattooing was considered taboo and was difficult to gain traction in the state of Minnesota, so the addition of Romeo being the official mascot was just a fun way that Mike purposely showed the conservative views of locals that he was there and didn’t give a hoot who scoffed in his direction.
Sailor Jerry Tattoo Traditions Carry On
Nowadays, many people still seek out tattoos like those that Jerry pioneered. There aren’t many artists that have fully mastered the art of Japanese American tattoos, especially in large scale pieces. However, Josh Arment in Minnesota is the best in the midwest and mentored under Mike Malone who learned the techniques directly from Sailor Jerry himself. Carrying on the legacy of the greats, Josh has made it his mission to build a shop that was “nothing special” into a tattoo hub that artists and those looking for phenomenal tattoos travel from across the country to visit.
If you want to learn more about Norman ‘Sailor Jerry’ Collins and the impact he had on tattooing, there are tons of fantastic sources to read, listen, and watch his story. From the documentary Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry: The Life of Norman K. Collins to numerous articles, the history of this man is rich and a story that the tattoo world will not soon forget.