Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

Use Restrictions

The sound recordings are for research use only.

Preferred Citation

Curley Collins. Collection, 1928-2009. Accession 40983, Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

Gift of Phillip G. Collins, 10 December 2003.

Additional gift of Phillip G. Collins, June 2009.

Biographical Information

Ruey "Curley" Collins was born in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, on 28 July 1915. At an early age, his father, Neal Collins, taught him to play the banjo. He joined the family band at twelve years old. In addition to the banjo, Curley Collins played the guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and harmonica. The fiddle became his primary instrument after winning the National Fiddle Championship in Atlanta in 1938.

Around 1929, he began playing with his first road band, the Mountain Melody Boys. Throughout his career, Curley Collins performed on numerous radio stations, including WSAZ in Huntington, West Virginia, WSB in Atlanta, WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia, WRVA in Richmond. He also entertained on a number of country music shows, such as the Cross Roads Follies, Pop Eckler's Radio Jamboree, WWVA Jamboree, Old Dominion Barn Dance, and Virginia's Lil' Ole Opry.

Curley Collins was made a Kentucky Colonel in 1983, and inducted into the Atlanta Country Music Hall Fame in 1984 and the Old Dominion Barn Dance Hall of Fame in 1991.

He died in Richmond on 27 October 1986.

Scope and Content

The Curley Collins Collection, 1928-2009, includes advertisements, articles, certificates of award, clippings, magazines, photographs, and sound recordings documenting the life and musical career of Ruey "Curley" Collins (1915-1986), an award-winning fiddler and country musician. Includes material on the time he spent playing with the following bands: Mountain Melody Boys, Prairie Pals, Pop Eckler and His Young'uns, and Tennessee Ramblers; on the following radio and television program: WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia, the Old Dominion Barn Dance in Richmond, Virginia, and Country Music Time in Richmond, Virginia; and with the following shows: Richmond Country Style in Richmond, Virginia; and Virginia's Lil' Ole Opry in Mathews, Virginia.

Also includes information on Neal "Pop" Collins, Curley's father, and Curley's marriage to Kaki Williams on a program of the Old Dominion Barn Dance at the Richmond Mosque (now the Landmark Theater) on 19 March 1949.

The sound recordings include nine compact discs and one cassette of Benny Kissinger and Curley at Virginia's Lil' Ole Opry at Donk's Theater in Mathew County, Virginia from July 1980 to June 1985, "Benny and Curley Sing-Nashville Picks" in 1981, and the reunion of the Old Dominion Barn Dance on March 23, 1975. The audio on the compact discs was extracted in October 2005 and saved onto the server.

This collection was compiled by his son, Phillip G. Collins.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged into the following series: