This article appeared in the June 25th Issue of TV Times
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By David Maull
TV Times

It didn't take long for Art Curley's parents to realize their son was born with a love for music.

As child, Curley's favorite form of entertainment was playing records on his mother's wind-up phonograph.

"All I did was play those records over and over and over again," he said.

Curley is still expressing that enthusiasm at the age of 75, serving as front man for the swing band he dubbed the Art Curley Trio.

Formed 13 years ago, the group belts out Big Band tunes made popular in the 1940s.

"I've been playing music for more than 50 years, since the early 1940s," Curley said.

Music is something that has always been come easy for the band leader.

As a teenager, Curley enjoyed the sounds produced by a clarinet-playing cousin and took up the instrument himself.

"My father bought me a clarinet when I was 16 years old," he said. "I just seemed to have a natural talent for it."

Those talents earned him a place in the Dover High School marching band in the early 1940s.

Curley was so good that he could listen to solos from Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw and then play them note-for-note.

"I just listened to music and learned to play," he said.

After high school, however, music took a back seat to his budding career in radio.

Curley got his first radio job in North Carolina in 1949 but soon returned to Delaware, where he spent most of the 1950s working at station WDEL in Wilmington. He moved on to jobs in Baltimore, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. before again returning to Wilmington to serve as news director at radio station WILM.

He held that position until 1978, when he moved to Southern Delaware and went to work for WBOC radio. After four years, he moved to WGMD in Rehoboth Beach, where he spent the next 13 years.

Throughout his years in radio, Curley kept his hand in music, playing in various bands on weekends.

"Music has always been the avocation," he said. "It was always a hobby."

In 1985, however, it became a more serious pursuit.

Curley decided to form is own band and begin exploring his own musical interests.

"I wanted to put a permanent trio together," he said. " I wanted to express some ideas of my own."

The Art Curley Trio began playing at restaurants and hotels along the Delaware and Maryland coast and is still going strong today. For the past eight years, they have been a staple at Shark's Cove in Fenwick Island, where they perform every Sunday from 4-7 p.m.

But Curley's band is actually more of a combo than a trio.

Curley, who plays clarinet and alto saxophone, is joined by pianist Lyn Engh, drummer Jim Ruark and guitarist Johnny DeSantis. Trumpet and trombone player Don Sharpe and pianist Earl Beardsley join the band for a few shows each month.

The band specializes in music from the 30s, 40s and 50s and plays the classics from Goodman, Shaw, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

"We just touch on some of the favorites," Curley said.

But the band also is prone to improvisation and is not afraid to put its spin on the classics.

Curley noted a good groove between the piano and clarinet players makes for a good jam session.

"I just get so deeply into it that it becomes a part of me," he said.

So deep is his love for swing music that he still hosts a Big Band show every Saturday from 9 a.m. until noon on WGMD.

Those older than 55 still seek out the Big Band sound, he said.

"It's just swing," he said. "If you listen to Big Bands, they just move along easily."