www.myspace.com/bobbyjensencountry

Listen to to Bobby's songs from his "North Country Outlaw" cd.

Produced by Rockie Lynne

Minnesota's own

NORTH COUNTRY OUTLAW®

 List to samples on player below and start downloading today!

Sometimes people ask me "What's with the guns and outlaw persona? Why did I choose that for my image? Well to be quit honest I didn't choose it, it chose me. It's who I am and to understand it better is to know about my past and where I come from. I am the son of a Tennessee Mountain Man who taught me to shoot at 3years old.

 This article was printed back in 1946 and it's about my Grandfather Edward S. Jensen known as "The Gun man of Lawrence County".

   The Gun Man
Just a few steps away from Hohenwald's business district is a ramshackle frame house sitting a bit sway-backed amid a yard overgrown with Johnson grass and rambunctious greenery.  Strangers, if they glanced at it, would pass it up as a deserted shanty, but Hohenwald folks know it as the home and repair shop of bearded, 66 year old Edward S. Jensen, Danish watch repairer and possessor of one of the rarest gun collections of this part of the country.
With his long black hair and his silky mustache that hangs limply down over his mouth and into his beard Edward Jensen could sling one of his 200 odd-looking firearms over his shoulder, and, unaided by the property or make-up man, step into the role of a western-bound forty-niner in any saga of Californ-i-ay in her roaring gold rush days.

But Jensen only looks the part of a toughened prospector smitten with wanderlust. He's a quiet, gentle man who has lived at Hohenwald for the past 18 years, and he plans to remain in the little Lewis County town for the rest of his days, contented with his shop, his son and his guns. 

"My prize gun," Jensen says, lifting a long rifle from its hanging place over the inside door of his shop, "is this Billinghurst revolving rifle.  It's the only one like it I've ever seen or heard about, and I've been interested in guns all of my life.  I bought it a long time ago in Wisconsin, and I figure it was made about the time of the civil War.  Of course, just like all the old fire pieces, it had to be loaded with powder and ball."

Although he is uncertain about the ages of many of his oldest guns, Jensen nevertheless believes that his Danish Yaker (it's their word for hunter) is among the most ancient of his relics. The Yaker and an old 1827 Harper's Ferry, which discharged a bullet shaped like an acorn with a hollow base and a wooden plug, his long Tom's typical of the hunting rifles of Kentucky and Tennessee woodsmen, and his Spencer repeating rifle which the Union Army began to use shortly before the close of the War Between the States are among his favorites.  His Evans repeating rifle is one made for the Russian armies in the late 70's and is of the same type, he says, with which Custer's men were armed at the time of their 1876 massacre except theirs were .45 caliber.

But for the customers who bring their clocks and watches to the cluttered front-room shop where the guns are unofficially on display, the greatest curiosity piece is Jensen's "walking stick" gun.  enameled a shiny black, the gun looks exactly like a simple, unadorned walking cane, crooked handle and all.  But a fiery, high tempered stroller had only to load it with loose powder and a ball, press the tiny button near the handle and rid himself permanently of any annoyer he may have changed to meet.  The curio was made by Remington Arms company in 1858 and bought by Jensen from a traveling salesman many years ago.

The "gun man," as his neighbors always refer to Jensen, is convinced that with a little oiling and the proper ammunition, almost every gun in his collection would shoot, and there are times when he'd like to take them out and test his judgment on a squirrel or two in the Hohenwald hollows, but hunting had to cease for Jensen when as a lad of 19 he crushed his ankle in a saw mill accident and he still finds it hard to walk long distances.  Son Jesper, a 194 pound, 15 year old, occasionally tries one out as several jagged holes on the shop floor mutely testify.  And on V-J night, Jesper could think of no better way of celebrating than to take down his father's 1827 Harper's Ferry and shoot it with loose powder and a round paper wad. "Anyway it made a lot of noise," he says.

Edward Jensen's parents and two of his grandparents came from Denmark in 1865 and settled on a farm in Wisconsin, where the gun man was born and raised.  Twenty-three years ago, on account of glowing reports from his brother who had moved south many years before, he decided to come to Tennessee.  For a few years he repaired watches in Lawrence county before picking Hohenwald as his home.

Jensen's shop is in one of the tiny front rooms of the house, and behind it he and his adored son "batch it," his wife having died when the boy was born.

For many years he and Jesper tried to keep the old guns neatly on display, but the shop is so crowded now that the guns are just stuck around in dusty corners and mingle with the cob-webs on the shelves. Floor space, work tables, walls and shelves are all a wild conglomeration of packed boxes, piles of odds and ends, repair machinery, clocks waiting to be repaired, guns, arrowheads picked up in Lawrence County and "family stuff."

This last category is comprised almost entirely of articles brought over from Denmark by past generation Jensens and includes several hand-made copper coffee pots, Danish clocks more than 100 years old, ancient grease lamps, an outfit for ironing fluted collars and two very old smoothing irons whose heavy, removable parts were heated in a fireplace and then fitted inside the instruments to produce the heat necessary for pressings. And none of it, guns included, is for sale.  Edward Jensen likes to have his things around him.  That's why he collected them.

Now you see...

Bobby Jensen Is Country

It's in the blood..........