It was during his time at UNLV in the music department that Curt became serious about the trombone. Curt was at UNLV studying under trombone master Bill Booth, now one of the most sought after trombonists in the LA recording scene. The turning point was at the Orange Coast Jazz Festival where the UNLV Jazz Ensemble was competing. The “pro” band that was playing at night was the Maynard Ferguson band, and during that concert the excitement of the band was all Curt needed to become hopelessly addicted to the instrument and genre.
During the last few years of college, Jimmy Trimble (former lead trombonist with Buddy Rich) started using Curt as a sub at the Dunes “Casino de Paris” show. Jimmy was also playing in many of the late night bands at the old musician’s union on Duke Ellington way and started using Curt on 2nd trombone on nearly all of them. This “break” along with an internship program being run by UNLV at the time helped introduce Curt to the pro players in town and the work started increasing.
In 1977 Curt was hired to go on a 13 state tour with Elvis Presley. Elvis’ plane came from LA with about half the band and stopped in Vegas to pick up the Vegas band members. The party started before the wheels even left the ground. Three hours later we were over Colorado and the pilots received an emergency call to land immediately. We landed in Pueblo Colorado and Marty Harrel (bass trombonist and contractor) went inside to make the call. Marty came out of the building with watery eyes – Elvis was found dead in his bathroom. So it was not to be, the plane returned home that same day. But within days of that happening Jimmy called and told Curt to move to Lake Tahoe to take over the trombone chair in the “Viva le Girls” show at Harrahs – then renamed to “Bedazzle”. Curt stayed on the Bedazzle show until late 1978 when the call came in to move back to Vegas to take over for Bill Booth on the lead chair on the Lewis Elias Relief Orchestra. In late 1978 Bill Booth had decided to leave Vegas and pursue recording studio work in Los Angeles. The two relief orchestras in Las Vegas were the most sought after jobs, they played the night off of the house orchestras, so they played a different hotel/show every night. A typical weekly schedule for the Elias relief orchestra was the Riviera Hotel on Friday, The Sands Hotel on Saturday, The MGM Grand star room on Monday, the Frontier Hotel on Tuesday, the MGM Grand production show (Jubilee) on Wednesday, the Desert Inn Hotel on Thursday and so on…
That led to a 5 year stint on the Lew Elias relief orchestra for Curt, which provided a lifetime of experience playing for all of the stars; Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Roy Clark, Juliet Prowse, Anthony Newley, and a ton of others. “Having to sight read a new show nearly every night is something few players ever get to do and the experience and confidence it provided is immeasurable” Curt says.
When the hotels began going “dark” one night a week and moving to a 6 night per week policy in 1983, Curt saw the writing on the wall for relief bands and put the word out he was “looking”. The Desert Inn Hotel offered him the lead trombone chair and Curt would spend another 4 years there playing such shows as “A Chorus Line”, Ellington’s “Sophisticated Ladies” and a multitude of stars including Sammy Davis Jr., Mel Torme and Jerry Lewis under musical director Jack Eglash.
During this same period of time the UNLV Dept of Music called Curt (in 1984) to help build a brand new recording studio and department at UNLV. Curt had always had an interest in recording, having recorded the UNLV Jazz Ensemble on some of the tours during the early years by lugging around a reel to reel recorder. Curt and two other helpers built the new recording studio at UNLV using used equipment purchased from Elektra recording studios in Los Angeles. Curt created the curriculum for both the 101 and 201 series recording classes and began teaching them during the weekdays. Curt would spend the next 11 years in a full time lectureship position at UNLV while simultaneously working at night in the showrooms. The recording studio became known as a great place to record for jazz and classical, and Curt would record record and produce over 200 CDs for various artists over the next 11 years.
In 1986 while playing Rich Little at the Desert Inn, Rich’s conductor introduced Curt to Artie Butler of Los Angeles who was in town conducting for Suzanne Sommers at another hotel. Artie was famous as a producer and arranger, having produced and arranged most all of Barry Manilow’s hits as well as countless others. Artie had spent all of his life writing for live orchestras, but Los Angeles and the world were moving into the new realm of computers, sequencing, synthesizers and MIDI. Artie told Curt he had purchased a bunch of equipment at his home and wanted some help learning how to use it. Curt spent the next six years making monthly trips with wife Eliane to Artie’s house in Beverly Hills, which also led to recording engagements (as both player and engineer) for numerous Disney projects including the movie “Oliver and Company”. This would lead to a lifetime friendship between them that still exists today.
In 1987 Jack Eglash and the Desert Inn Orchestra were terminated, so Curt jumped across the street and took the lead trombone chair at the Frontier Hotel. That show lasted for one more year until they closed, so Curt jumped on the Caesar’s Palace band with John Haig playing second trombone under Jim Huntzinger, widely known as the best lead trombonist in Las Vegas and equally respected in Los Angeles. “Sitting next to Jim and learning his lead playing style was like attending a master class every night” says Curt. “Even after all the years of playing lead trombone in the showrooms, that experience dramatically changed the way I approached playing lead trombone.”
In 1989 while Curt was on the Caesar’s band, Artie Butler was hired by Turner Broadcasting to do all onsite music for the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle. Artie called Curt and told him to go to Seattle to find a studio that could be booked for a solid month during the games, so Curt made the trip and toured a bunch of studios until he found one that would work perfectly. Curt and Artie spent the entire month during the games in Seattle and recorded music for the various local producers that were onsite for athlete interviews, local Seattle sightseeing vignettes and the like. “Often we would get a completed video tape at 10AM which needed to have music completely written and recorded for a 1PM airing. It was high pressure but incredibly fun” says Curt.
Both Curt and Artie were huge fans of Joe Williams, and during this time Artie was composing a song for his father called “Here’s to Life”. “Often when Eliane and I would head down to LA to stay with Artie for a few days, Artie would play little bits of what he was writing, none of us knew at the time he would be writing a song that would be recorded by Streisand, Shirley Horn, Joe Williams and others. He would sometimes cry while playing it on the piano for us, and we would cry too – Artie is a tremendously sensitive man – his love of music is so deep he will sometimes get emotional just listening to great music. One of the most memorable moments of my life was when Artie finished the song ‘Here’s to Life’ and wanted Joe Williams to be the first to record it. We spent the day adding strings, french horns and woodwinds to the track to get it ready. Joe just happened to be staying at the Beverly Hilton hotel nearby so we went and picked him up at about 11PM and went back to Artie’s house. We spent all night with Joe laying down the first ever vocal recording of ‘Here’s to Life’, and it was simply a magical evening” remembers Curt.
By 1990 Caesar’s didn’t have much work for musicians, the big musician’s strike of 1989 had taken a severe toll on hundreds of local players, and Curt had jumped over to the Union Plaza playing in a smaller band for a show called “Nudes on Ice”. “I had always wanted to have my own band, so I finished putting together my big band dance orchestra book and sure enough the stars aligned and I was introduced to Joe Guercio who had just become musical director for the Steve Wynn properties (Golden Nugget, Mirage and Treasure Island). Joe asked me to be his contractor and assistant musical director for the properties, and we used my big band book for all the casuals and parties at the hotels.” This partnership would last 5 years, and the two of them would contract nearly every industrial show that would come to Vegas over those 5 years. “But even with that success it was tough to make a really good living at it, and the only way I survived was due to the combination of the full time lectureship position at UNLV, combined with the contractor position at Wynn, combined with part time training for a leadership training company” Curt says.
For Curt, the music and recording worlds ended in July 1995. He was offered a full time position as director of training for Rapport Leadership and he walked away from the trombone and recording world for nearly 7 years to cut his teeth in the world of business. “It was an incredible 7 years, learning a new world and being awakened to the different income levels outside of the music world. I had to learn how to run a business.”
In 2002 he and Michael McGhee, a friend from UNLV, founded Anexeon, an IT Services company which has since become one of the largest of its kind in the state. “During the years between 2000 and 2007 I loved what I was doing at Anexeon, but when music is in your blood it is hard to stay away from. I tried to play the occasional easy gig, but I hated the way I was playing since I wasn’t practicing every day. You simply can’t be a part time brass player, it requires full time practice to sound half way decent.” Curt did manage to stay lightly involved in music and recording, and was co-producer and engineer for two albums featuring Carl Fontana and Jiggs Whigham – “Nice n Easy” and “Keeping up with the Bones’es” during those years.
By 2008 Anexeon was running well, and Curt decided to attempt to become a trombone player again which would require a daily practice ritual. Curt remembers: “I received a call from Ken Hanlon asking if I still had some of the old Boneheads charts that we used to play at the musician’s union. I had some of them and Ralph Pressler had a few. Ken put together a jazz cruise with Bob McChesney and we all went out on the ship and had a great time playing that book with Bob. I had forgotten how much fun that book was – so I decided to keep it going. We started withabout 20 of the old Boneheads charts, and since then local writers and arrangers including myself have written about 50 more arrangements for the group. It is as fun as it gets for trombone players!”
Word got around Curt was playing again and he started getting calls for some of the shows around town – “but only if it’s fun” says Curt. Some of the really notable shows have been the America’s Got Talent Tour in 2010 for Michael Grimm, Journey, Andrea Bocelli, The WHO, Johnny Mathis, Bob Anderson’s “Frank the Man and hte Music”, and in 2019 Curt was hired as the lead trombonist for Lady Gaga’s Jazz and Piano shows at the Park MGM.
Anexeon was sold in 2020 and Curt now enjoys being able to produce/engineer various CD projects as well as playing in shows and jazz groups locally. In addition, The Las Vegas Boneheads just finished their 2nd CD project celebrating the 60th birthday of the group (1962-2022). The CD is called “Sixty and Still Cookin'” and features Andy Martin as gust artist. Release date is mid November 2022.