Curley Collins collection

Ruey Culbertson (Curley) Collins (1915-1986) played the fiddle, guitar, and banjo in country and western bands of the 1930s-1980s. Born near Catlettsburg in eastern Kentucky, Curley Collins was the son of Neal (Pop) Collins, well-known locally as a musician, and Maggie McKnight Collins. He learned to play the banjo from his father and joined the family band. At age 14, Collins joined a professional group called the Mountain Melody Boys, and later formed a second group, the Prairie Pals, with a brother and friends. The bands performed on radio stations in Huntington, West Virginia and Ashland, Kentucky. Popular bandleader Garner "Pop" Eckler invited the Prairie Pals to join his group, which he renamed Pop Eckler and His Young'uns. Eckler's Covington, Kentucky-based band appeared on WLW in Cincinnati, and, in 1936, relocated to Atlanta to become featured performers on WSB Radio's "Cross Roads Follies." Pop Eckler and His Young'uns received national exposure through the NBC network and performed variety shows throughout the Southeast, in which Curley Collins sang and danced as well as playing the guitar, banjo, and fiddle. In 1938, Collins won the National Fiddlers' Contest, held at Municipal Auditorium in Atlanta. Eckler and his band relocated to Wheeling, West Virginia in about 1942 and then broke up.

Following Army service during World War II, Collins joined Jack Gillette's Tennessee Ramblers, a group that included musicians with whom he had worked on WSB, among them singer/yodeler Benny Kissinger. The band performed on radio in Wheeling and Richmond, Virginia. After the Tennessee Ramblers split up in 1946, Collins and Kissinger formed a duo act. As "Benny and Curley" they were featured for years on the "Old Dominion Barn Dance" show on WRVA Radio (Richmond, Virginia), heard nationally on the CBS network. After "Barn Dance" went off the air in the mid-1950s, Collins worked full-time as a warehouse foreman, though he performed occasionally. After retiring from his non-music job in 1979, Collins renewed his career with Kissinger. Finding an appreciative regional audience for their old-time music, the pair appeared at "Old Dominion Barn Dance" reunions, festivals, and at "Lil' Ole Opry" shows in Hudgins, Virginia. In 1981, the duo recorded an album in Nashville. Collins also played fiddle with the band Shades of Country.

Collins received a number of honors, including being named a Kentucky Colonel (1983) and election to the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame (1984). Posthumously, he was elected to the Old Dominion Barn Dance Hall of Fame (1991) and received the Founders Award from the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame (2006). Curley Collins was married four times and had six children. He remained an active performer until he passed away in 1986.