Issue Icons
Jack Rudy
By Mike GiantPhoto By Mike Giant
Back in the 1970s, when Jack Rudy was fresh out of the Marines and apprenticing at the legendary East L.A. tattoo shop Goodtime Charlie’s Tattooland, some of his clients described a tattooing method they saw in prison: a single, sharpened guitar string connected to a homemade machine, which was perfect for rendering stylized portraits and black-and-gray work. Over time, Jack and Charlie Cartwright—the owner and founder of the shop—developed a single-needle tattoo machine and established themselves as the go-to guys for this difficult jailhouse technique. Few tattoo artists are skilled enough to do it well; today, Jack still rules it.
I’d heard plenty of stories about Jack, both good and bad, so I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at his shop, Koolsville, in Anaheim to meet him (he also owns Goodtime Charlie’s Tattooland, now located in Anaheim as well). Jack arrived 20 minutes late, which I was told was quite on time for him, and I think he assumed that I was there to get tattooed, so he worked his way through the shop for a few minutes before approaching me. Maybe he was afraid of being interviewed by some dorky person who knew nothing about tattoos, because when he found out I was the writer, he looked relieved. He’d never heard of me, but he could tell that I was into tattoos. After introductions, we went into the parking lot and checked out his car for a while. Then, we settled into a big, black couch in his shop to talk.
Have you ever thought of yourself as an icon within the field of tattooing?
No, but if I run into any icons this week I’ll let you know. I don’t know. I suppose, in some way, because as black-and-gray work goes, fine lines, single-needle, I was right there at the beginning. Goodtime Charlie and I figured it out. Prior to that, I’d been working with homemade machines, but when Charlie started teaching me, he was using 4s and 5s, and it was like “Whoa – he’s teaching me, so I’m going to go along with whatever program he has.” But guys kept asking for finer lines. “Can you guys do it like with a guitar string?” Well, I don’t know if a guitar string would work on a needle bar, but we’re going to figure something out. That was maybe late ‘75. By ‘76, we definitely were doing single-needle.
So the development of the single-needle style came from your clientele, more so than personal interest?
Well, I mean it was both. I felt so privileged to be taught by Charlie, who is such a cool guy, I just thought whatever he says that’s what I’m going to go along with. But he did black-and-gray work, and that was even rare because the only all-black work that was being done in those days was basically your black rose of death or black panther or some kind of cover-up.
Another thing that makes me think of you as an icon is your lettering. Where did your lettering styles come from? Who taught you that?
Well, interestingly enough, nobody. I have had influences. Greg Irons was one of my major lettering influences. I loved this guy. I was a fan of his when he was just doing underground comics; that’s how I was exposed to his art. When I found out he was tattooing, which was probably around 1980, I was just floored. I met him and we hit it off, and we became good friends and I ended up working on him and he worked on me. I met Rick Griffin—this guy was a lettering master—around the same time as Greg Irons. Those two guys were my biggest lettering influences. Early on, Freddy Negrette was my biggest influence in handwriting because he had a style. He did things at the time that I wouldn’t have even thought of. He just distorted, twisted letters around. Those three people are my biggest influences, but it just evolved from there. See, way before I was tattooing, I always loved lettering. I remember even in grade school that I would take pride in my penmanship, to the point where I would get in trouble because it would take longer to write things out really nice.
Did you see, back then, a lot of the writing on the walls and things? Did customers request that at all?
I learned how to do Old English lettering when I was 13 because I had a book and it was a bunch of medieval cartoons, with the executioner and the guys hanging on the walls. It was done by a guy named Severin. I don’t know if he did the lettering, but all the lettering in the book was done with a calligraphy pen. I also learned gang writing and started doing that too when I was 13. I remember I was at Venice Beach one time and I saw all this gang graffiti on the walls of bathrooms somewhere, and I remember getting a napkin and writing it down, as much as I could, as many different letters and so forth, and I just started doing that from that age too. So I’ve always had an instant fascination with any kind of cool lettering.
How much are you tattooing these days?
Well, actually I’m still doing it quite a bit, a few days a week. I might skip a week here and there when I’ve got other things going on, like other art projects. I’ve got a lot of those going on.
Are you still using a single needle most of the time?
I’ve done a lot of tattoos with the whole thing single-needle. I still do it occasionally, when I think it can be pulled off. A lot of people don’t realize you can do extensive shading with a single needle. And when you think about guys in the joint, forever and ever, they did the whole back pieces and whatever with a single and that’s all they had. So it’s time consuming, but it will work. But of course, with a modern professional machine it’s much more efficient.
Right. Who did some of your tattoos?
Ed Hardy did my upper arms way back in the day with his single-needle, black-and-gray work. Bob Roberts has worked on me. Freddy Negrette, Goodtime Charlie, Filip Leu, Hanky Panky, Zeke Owens, Gil Monte, Greg Irons. I’ve only had a few people work on me, actually.
What do you think about the present state of tattooing?
I think it’s great. I think it’s really, really cool, except for three things: there’s too many tattooers, too many shops, and way too many conventions. Other than that, it’s all good.
Mike Giant trained as an architect and worked as a graffiti artist and graphic illustrator before moving on to tattooing in 1998. In 2003, he opened his own tattoo shop, Stay Gold, in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico. His artwork has been shown in galleries all over the U.S. and Japan.