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Painless
Jack Tryon
Painless
Jack Tryon, also
sometimes known
as "Three Star
Jack", was often
billed as the "World's
Most Handsomely
Tattooed Man." Charlie
Wagner and Lew
Alberts tattooed
him around the
turn of the 20th
century.
Tryon worked as an attraction.
Little is known where Tryon learned
the art of tattooing, but by the
early 1910 he was making a name
for himself as a tattooist. He
was a man of many talents. Bob
Shaw remembered Tryon as a magician,
wirewalker, a hand balancer and
fire-eater. Jack's wife was a snake
handler and often worked with him.
Tyron also worked as a boss canvas
man on railroad shows like Sells-Floto
in 1923.
In the late 1940s Col. William
Todd was stationed at San Antonio
while in the United States Air
Force. He recalls that there were "lots
of tattoo shops in San Antonio.
On the weekends I would visit the
tattoo shops and get a little piece
of work from a gentleman by the
name of Painless Jack Tyron. I
got to talking with Jack and wanted
to buy a machine. He fixed me up
with a little machine, a bottle
of color and 4 or 5 stencils of
Air Force wings and such. I took
it back to the base, we only got
off Sunday, so Saturday I was tattooing
a bunch of my buddies. I did this
for about three weeks. One day
the Officer of the Watch came in
and made me wrap my stuff up, and
he took it to the Orderly Room
and confiscated it from me. I wanted
my machine and stuff back but I
was afraid to say anything. I left
there and never heard any more
about it".
Just a few years later, Tryon played
a part in Bob Shaw's tattoo career.
At that time, Bob was working for
Bert Grimm in St. Louis. "By the
Fall of '48 business was just so
slow.
Bert contacted an old circus friend
who was in San Antonio, Painless
Jack Tryon, and he gave me a job.
I went to San Antonio in May of
1949."
It is interesting that Jack Tryon
had an affect on both Bob Shaw
and Col. Todd early in their tattoo
careers. Shaw and Todd went on
to work together in Clarksville,
Tennessee in the 1950's, at Long
Beach, California in the 1960s
and owned a shop together in Portland,
Oregon in the 1970s. 
Tex Rowe drifted through San Antonio
in the 1940s and remembered Tryon
as "a tattooed man covered by Wagner
and Albert, and an old-time circus
tattooer who worked out of an antique
circus wagon. Staked me to my first
square meal in days and let me
sit-in for a while to make a little
'walk around' money."
Tattoo Archive © 2003
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