Around the same time the Beatles made their culture-shattering first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, Jones Barbershop opened up on North Palafox.
Owner Charles Jones probably didn’t have a clue that that many young men would soon start delaying their regular haircuts in favor of the longer “mop tops” that the Fab Four would inspire across the globe, but he didn’t really have a choice. It was who he was.
He was a barber. His son, Mike Jones, born that same year, would become one as a young adult.
“I was a barber, my father was a barber, my grandfather was a barber, and my great-grandfather was a barber,” said Mike Jones, 62, who joined his father’s shop at age 20. “My grandmother, great-aunt and a couple of other family members were beauticians, and I cut hair for 40 years.”
Jones Barbershop, the oldest continuously operating barbershop in Pensacola, has seen hair styles come and go, adapting as time moved on. They’ve cut the hair of folks who are no longer with us; they’ve cut the hair of babes who would return as teens and adults for a trim or a cut again and again.
Connor Clayton was only 13 months old in July 1995 when his mother, Joan Clayton, brought him up to Jones Barbershop for his first haircut. He’d return for haircuts through the years.
In early May, Joan Clayton purchased Jones Barbershop for her son Connor, a licensed barber since 2017, to run, manage and cut hair from the same chair, one of five in the shop, which Charles Jones, then Mike Jones, cut hair for decades. There’s even a picture of Connor receiving that first haircut framed on the wall, as well as other photos of him returning through the years.
Charles Jones, a former U.S. Army paratrooper, worked as a barber in Brewton and Auburn, Alabama, before the family moved to Pensacola and opened Jones Barbershop in 1964. He died in 2019 at the age of 90.
“He put him up on a booster chair and cut his hair,” Mike Jones said of his father and Connor.
Now, Connor Clayton, 32, is running the show.
“He’ll be alright,” Jones said. “He cuts a good hair.”
Joan Clayton said she “dreamed of having that barbershop.”
“Then Clayton grows up and goes to barber school,” she said. “It all worked out. He was kind of raised in this barbershop.”
Jones Barbershop isn’t in its original building, though it is on the same property. For decades the business operated out of Mike Jones’ grandparents’ original home, a small wooden structure built in the 1930s that remained until 2000, when the current larger, brick building was built.
There’s a framed photo of the original building by the front entryway now.
But Jones Barbershop still retains that old-time barbershop vibe.
There’s freshly popped popcorn every day for waiting customers and guests, and a few older gents in seats waiting for their turns in the five barber chairs. Two of those chairs are the cutting grounds for two of the barbers who have been there longest, one for 25 years and the other for 10 years, with newer barbers in the other spots.
And now, Clayton is in charge of everyday operations, cutting hair and running the shop. (Joan Clayton said she’s not in the store often and instead operates the financial side of the business.)
“There’s a lot of the background stuff that other barbers wouldn’t realize,” Connor Clayton said of managing the shop. “You have to come in here and clean, make sure everything is ready, make sure the sodas are stocked. There’s a lot of things besides cutting hair.”
Not that he ever envisioned himself cutting hair. Clayton was taking general studies classes at Pensacola State College in the 2010s, while his mother was working in an administrative position in PSC’s cosmetology and barbering department.
“I’d go in her office and do some of my work between classes,” he said. “There was one barber instructor who would always hound me—’Why don’t you try barbering classes?’ “
After more hounding, he relented and figured he would give the program a try.
“It was like a five-semester course, and I couldn’t really judge the profession off the first semester because all you’re doing is theory work,” he said. “It was not until I’d say the third semester when you’re actually on the floor and working with real humans’ hair that I was like ‘Ok, this isn’t too bad. I can stick through this, because at that point I was still weighing my options.”
He cut hair at John’s II Barber Shop in Pace until its recent closure and soon his mother would purchase Jones Barbershop. Two other barbers from John’s II Barbershop came with Connor to Jones Barbershop. Now, the shop, the name and its legacy are his.
Mike Jones is fine with that.
Asked if he missed it, he gave an honestly reply.
“Not for one second. I miss the people because there were a lot of good people. But I did it for a long time.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola’s oldest barbershop has been a family business, until now
Reporting by Troy Moon, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
