Jan
Charlie Barrs’ Tattoos
Researched & Written by Carmen Nyssen
Good ol’ Sailor Charlie Barrs—a quiet man who spoke with a slight German accent and was seldom seen without a stogie hanging from his mouth—was a master machinist-tattooer. That’s his main claim to fame in tattoo history. For interesting particulars, such as whether his real name was indeed Charlie Barrs, or what year he arrived in the U.S. and started tattooing, you’ll have to wait for the upcoming Bert Grimm book. As for Sailor Charlie’s tattooing, I figured that today, his birthday anniversary, was a fitting time to share some more examples of his work.
If you like, you can spy a few on the previous Granddaddy of all Good Tattooing article. My personal favorite, the subject of this post, is the collaborative body suit Barrs and Bert Grimm did on Sandy Dillon (AKA Clarence Jorgenson (1906-1985))—when they worked together on Main Street in Los Angeles c.1924-1926. Although several other tattoo artists added a design or two to Dillon’s collection, Barrs and Bert did the bulk of them. To me, Dillon’s beautifully executed tattoos perfectly illustrate both Barrs’ tattooing ability and his influence on Bert’s work.
As evidence, we even have “time-lapse” images that show how well Dillon’s tattoos held up over time. The first photo, just below, dates to the 1920s and depicts Dillon’s recently applied tattoos.
The second image, today’s featured photo at the top of the post, depicts Dillon’s stunningly intact tattoos nearly 20 years later, when he enlisted in the Army during World War II. His body suit was such a sight the Associated Press published the photo in newspapers nationwide.
A third set of color images, below the 1920s photo, was taken ten more years later, in the 1950s. While some of Dillon’s tattoos appear to have been touched up by then, the photos still effectively demonstrate their overall longevity.
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Sandy Dillon Tattooed Man
During the 1920s, Dillon took the road with carnivals and worked as both a tattooed man and tattooer. A number of period pitch cards (later reprinted by Bernard Kobel) also show his tattoo work from different angles.
Some of you may have noticed that Bert’s old photos of Dillon—in private collections and various publications—are imprinted with the date 1916 or 1918. As it happens, these dates aren’t exactly accurate. It seems that Bert—like many a yarn spinner trying to jazz up a story—sometimes exaggerated about how young he was when he tattooed Dillon; both Dillon (b. 1906) and Bert (b. 1900) were most certainly older in the mid-1920s than Bert claimed in the below interview.
As noted in a July 4, 1977 Willamette Week newspaper article: “A photo on his workbench depicts 17 year old Grimm applying the finishing touches on an all-over design covering 12 year old Clarence Dillon. “His parents brought him to me and paid for it,” Grimm explains as if to avoid moral censure. “Today Clarence is an old bald-headed barber on Main Street in L.A. Back in those days there was no age limit-today people have to be 18.””
Now, it is true that Dillon became a barber. He remained in Los Angeles and for six decades, from the 1920s into the 1980s, stayed in touch with Main Street tattooers.
Questions or Comments? Email:
carmennyssen@buzzworthytattoo.com
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