Sailor Jerry Collins

Norman Keith Collins was born on January 14, 1911 in Reno Nevado but grew up in Northern California and left home as a teenager. An itinerate adventurer, he hitchhiked and hopped freight trains across the country, working temporary jobs and camping. Collins originally learned tattooing from a man named "Big Mike" from Palmer, Alaska, originally using the hand-pricking method. In the late 1920s he had drifted to Chicago and two things happened that changed his life. One, he hooked up with local tattoo legend, Gib 'Tatts' Thomas, who taught him to use a tattoo machine. (For practice, he paid bums with cheap wine or a few cents to let him tattoo them). The second was joining the Navy.

The United States Navy was a place where the young man, who'd been crossing the country on freight trains and highways, could upgrade his lifes adventure and at 19 he enlisted. It was during this time, Collins developed a lifelong love of ships. He would eventually earn master's papers on every kind of vessel you could get tested for. When Collins mustered out of the Navy, he settled in Honolulu. Back then, Hawaii was off the map cluster of islands, but within a few years, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and everything changed. At the height of WWII, over 12 million Americans served in the military and, at any given moment, large numbers of them were on shore leave in Honolulu. The circumstances of war fed a cross-section of American men into environments that usually only existed on the fringes – places like Honolulu's Hotel Street, a district comprised almost exclusively of bars, brothels and tattoo parlors. This was where Norman K. Collins, as Sailor Jerry, built his legacy.

WWII was a great mixer of American society. Being in the military, you were suddenly a worldly traveler. Americans of all walks were thrust all together. They worked together, they traveled together, ate together, they fought the battles together and unwound together — like down in the Hotel Street District in Honolulu where they ended up in the same neighborhood on shore leave. Soldiers and sailors wanted to grab all the action they could before they shipped out again. Whether a man was raised upper class or on the backwoods farm, when out on shore leave, he was fixated on one or all of three things. Just like the classic tattoo says, they were out to drink, see some women and get tattooed. Lines for bars were so long that you had only minutes to finish your drink before having to make room for the next guy. The mix of booze and bravado that characterized the mindset of an American serviceman on shore leave is a deep thread in Jerry’s art. From “Man's Ruin,” an image of a cocktail girl in a cocktail glass surrounded by a dice, cards and dollar signs – to a bloody knife though the heart with the words “Death Before Dishonor” – Sailor Jerry's tattoos dealt with issues that were at once practical and elemental. Hotel Street may have been a place that would make a preacher blush, but it was also a place where truths were expressed. War, whether you're for it or against it, tends to filter out the crap and Sailor Jerry's work can also be stark and in your face.

"If you don't think you have balls enough to wear a tattoo, don't get one. But don't try to make excuses for yourself by knocking the fellow who does!" Signed, "Thank you...Sailor Jerry," this note was placed prominently in Jerry's Hotel Street shop and it gives you some idea of the attitude that he brought to his work. He was aware that his clientele weren't thugs just out to terrorize the town, they were men serving a higher cause. Or as he put it, "The tattooed barbarians that live and die on world battlegrounds."Ironically, Jerry was deeply influenced by the culture that started the war in the first place - the Japanese. The most proficient and sophisticated tattoo artists of the times were the Japanese masters known as Hori's. He became the first Westerner to enter in regular correspondence with these masters, sharing techniques and tattoo tracings. By fusing American and Asian sensibilities, Jerry created his own style of tattooing - iconic and artistic, irreverent and soulful, radical and beautiful. Jerry was continually frustrated by other artists (who he called “brain pickers”) copying his work. He refused to do big chest or back pieces on customers who had tattoos by artists he didn't respect. His letters to fellow tattoo artists are a testament to his devotion to the craft of tattooing. He goes over detail after detail, from techniques for shading to the “possibilities of tone and texture” to “crash” effects. Jerry was in a constant quest to deepen his own skills. “My slogan is,” he states, “I haven't done my best yet, only my best so far.”

Tattooing was just one dimension of Jerry’s life. He continued to pursue his maritime interests as captain of a three-masted schooner that toured the islands. He had his own radio show called Old Ironsides on KRTG during which he alternated between political rants and reading his own poetry.

He taught himself to be an electrician, which helped him innovate his tattoo machines and power supplies. He played in a jazz band. He toured around in a canary yellow Thunderbird and he was out on his Harley when he had the heart attack that would take his life (after collapsing in a cold sweat, he got back on his bike and rode home). The day before Jerry died, he wrote a letter to friend and fellow tattoo artist, Paul Rogers, joking that he was going to “down some ground seahorse meat, pulverized ratshit, snake skin, lizard eggs, dried snails and dried bat skin and by go we will see who is the best doctor in the end.” He asked his wife that upon his death, his shop be passed on to his protégés, Don Ed Hardy, Mike Malone or Zeke Owens. If neither took the place over, Jerry left instructions it was to be burned to the ground. Malone took possession of the shop, changed the name to China Seas Tattoo and ran it for almost 25 years. In a sense, Jerry was always battling something, whether it was conventional thinking, the mediocrity of copycat tattoo artists or the government meddling into his affairs. He never knuckled under to anyone or anything. To quote from a letter Jerry wrote to protégé, Don Ed Hardy, commenting on a yin yang dragon design, “keep them fighting, it's the way that Yin Yang functions — if there is no opposition of forces there is no evolution of life!” Sailor Jerry died June 12th 1973.

Sailor Jerry Collins had been blazing his way across the tattoo universe for some time before he was discovered by the likes of Don Ed Hardy, Mike Rollo Malone and Tattoo Zeke Owens. But it was his art, his innovation and ultimately his personna that captured and transformed them to become the titans they each became. He had mastered the military icons and installed them on the marching armies and fleets of sailors of an era. Capturing their wild and independant asperations and symbolizing their accomplishments, conquests and dark images. His care and dedication to the craft and to the ones he felt did not compromise their integrity, was a contrast to the reputation and station afforded to his professional standing. Jerry, who hated what the Japanese had done at Pearl Harbor, was a lifelong student of asian and far-eastern art and philosphy. He corresponded with Japanese tattoo masters long before any other and studiously followed their styles. He contributed vastly to changes in designs and to the introductions of images into the established tattoo iconery. Designs drawn for Production Flash by Don Nolan in the 70s and early 80s, reflects much of the artistic vocabulary that Sailor Jerry professed, and it became the virtually standard images of popular tattooing until the 90s and even today.

Sailor Jerry made significant contributions to the art and engineering of tattooing as an industry. He developing pigments over a long period of time of experimentation. Between correspondance and trades with Tattooists of the times and through his own empirical experiments, he introduced many new colors that were solid and bright. His innovations were practical and genious at the same time. He experimented with new needle formations to push more pigment with less trauma to the skin on large areas. He became one of the first artists to utilize single-use needles and to use an autoclave to sterilize equipment. He photographed volumes of his work and drew and painted tens of thousands of designs.Amongst his accomplishments is the astounding legacy and body of work he amassed out of his shops. His art work has been republished by Ed Hardy and Mike Malone, in numerous editions, as well as the thousands of examples of art, flash and stencils that are in circulation. The influence of his style on some pivotal modern artists like Mike Malone, Ed Hardy and Zeke Owens is monumental but the everlasting inspiration to young tattooers of today is still a testament to the allure of a "Sailor Jerry" tattoo.

Though it is plain that Sailor Jerry Collins Legacy as the one and only Hori Smoku, Captain of the Industry, will long endure within the tattoo culture. What is not plain is the trademark Sailor Jerry and what that legacy will be. Though Louise Collins, Jerry's wife, sold the shop to Malone for a reported $20,000 in 1973 - she and their 2 kids had received no additional compensation afterwards, even though, now the Sailor Jerry Collins name is a brand that is likely worth tens of millions of dollars. Mike Malone and Ed Hardy published a number of books with the art and artifacts they had aqquired and a great deal of Jerry's effects were also widely circulated. A clothing line licensing deal was struck with Gyro Worldwide(later Quaker City Merchantile) in 1999 and the well known Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum came shortly after. When Malone and Hardy sold those rights in 2003 for $20,000 to Quaker City, it was still a growing enterprise, just as Jerry's tattoo legacy seems a never ending, ever climbing revelation. Mike passed away in 2007 but the bittersweet twists continued. The brand et al was sold for an undisclosed amount to William Grant & Sons in 2008. It is now a multi-million dollar enterprise that had never paid any proceeds whatsoever to Louise Collins and Jerry's 2 children. Louise had never up to that point challenged the use of Sailor Jerry's name, though as executor of Jerry's estate she had never released or agreed to the use of his name as a brand. When it was discovered at that time that Louise and one of their daughters was near to homelessness. There was an outcry from a few who knew of the plight and there was some contention that belied the passion and emotion verses the greed and profit. It's messy. Jerry was a proud, patriotic, independant and forthright fighter and protector of the craft, the legacy and certainly the need to keep from allowing outside influences in the trade. He would be fuming.

Louise Collins filed suite against William Grant & Sons in 2019, claiming she had never given permission to the intellectual rights for the Sailor Jerry brand nor would Jerry have wanted to tarnish his name and reputation with salascious ad promotions and imagery. Louise and family received an undisclosed settlement amount from William Grant & Sons in October of 2020.