Lund was a high school math teacher in Kentucky who worked as a musician on the side. He left teaching to tour with Jimmy Ray and his band.[1] He originally billed himself as Art London.[2]
He found work early on as a vocalist with a band led by clarinetist Jimmy Joy. A better-known clarinetist whom Lund would later sing with was Benny Goodman, with whom he cut several records, including “Blue Skies,” “On the Alamo,” and (in duet with Peggy Lee) “Winter Weather” and “If You Build a Better Mousetrap”. In addition to his work with the King of Swing, Lund sang and recorded with bandmaster and trumpet king Harry James.[3]
On television, he played “Heber”, a gambler who bets on the death of a made-up outlaw on James Arness's TV Western Gunsmoke (1962), in S8E15's “False Front”. Lund also recorded the theme to the 1965 TV series Branded starring Chuck Conners.
Lund was married nearly 30 years (1940–1969) to Kathleen Virginia Bolanz-Lund. On October 16, 1969, Kathleen Lund was killed in an automobile accident. She was a passenger in a car driven by friend and former model/actress Rosemarie Bowe (wife of actor Robert Stack), when the car veered into a culvert near Sacramento Metropolitan Airport. Lund did not remarry until the last year of his life, to Janet Burris Chytraus. Art Lund died on May 31, 1990, in his native Utah. He was 75. At the time of his death, Lund was survived by wife Janet, a daughter, Kathleen Ann Olson of Canoga Park, California; a son, Arthur Earl Lund III of Pittsburgh; a sister, Ruth Glover, a grandson and two granddaughters. Lund was a Mormon.[4]
