By WILLIAM KELLY

SOMERS POINT – For more than 40 years, motorists were guided by Tony Mart’s giant rooftop neon arrow from the traffic circle in Somers Point to Bay Avenue and a small strip of nightclubs where early rock ‘n’ roll history was made.

Now, only a historic marker acknowledges they were even there.

Today, the building at the site of the legendary Tony Mart nightclub sits empty, boarded up and overgrown with weeds, with no real development plans on the horizon.  But for decades, from 1944 to 1982, it was one of the hottest nightclubs on the East Coast featuring six bars, two dance floors, major recording stars, rock ‘n’ roll bands on two stages and a line to get in. 

It’s been a quarter of a century now since “Eddie and the Cruisers” was filmed there as a last hurrah before they demolished the place, but people just won’t let the good times go. 

The uncertainty of the present situation doesn’t detract from the history of all the good times, which will be celebrated at a Tony Mart’s reunion beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 22 at American Legion Post 352, First Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Somers Point. There will be live entertainment, dancing, good food and T-shirts.

There have been other Tony Mart reunions. The first was in June 1986 at Ego’s, the club that replaced Tony Mart. It featured The Band, which played at Tony Mart’s in the summer of 1965 as Levon and the Hawks. A 10-year reunion was held at Omar’s in Margate, and last September the 25th anniversary of the filming of “Eddie and the Cruisers” was celebrated at Stumpo’s.

“I knew we were going to have a reunion, but I just realized it was 25 years,” Tony’s son Carmen Marotta said at the party.

During Tony Mart’s final few summers, Marotta would often set up a barbecue pit in the parking lot in the afternoon and share ribs and pork sandwiches with friends and passersby. That’s what this reunion will be like, with locally renowned chef Richard Spurlock, whose father ran the Bay Avenue barbershop, cooking up the grub.

Although the music will be provided by bands that never played Tony Mart, Billy Walton, Jacque Major, Bobby Fingers and the Mainline Horns certainly exemplify the type of music that Tony Mart was known for during its 40 years in operation.

Walton is one of the hottest young guitarists playing today, and recently opened for Major at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

Fingers is considered the best sing-a-long piano player in these parts, and the Mainline Horns will certainly round out the proceedings.

“Tony Mart’s is remembered and is famous for rock ‘n’ roll,” Marotta said, “but actually a broad spectrum of music was played there – big band swing, Dixieland jazz, rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll.”

For Marotta, 52, who grew up at Tony Mart’s, the place is part of his earliest memories.

“[I remember] running around there as a child, playing with the bouncers and musicians, eating cherries, drinking Cokes and just being there,” he said. “I can recall things from 1961 or 1962, when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I remember the Fall Guys playing ‘Alabama Jubilee’ and ‘Tiger Rag,’ and doing the Sunday night Showtime, when they would do a Dixieland Southern type of show, dance on the bar and play ‘When the Saints Come Marching In,’ in sort of a mummers kind of way.”

While the memories of Tony Mart are still strong, and all of the old nightclubs are gone, the music remains. Marotta, as a member of the city’s cultural commission, helps book the acts for the Friday night beach concerts and the Good Old Days picnic, which continue the popular Tony Mart’s musical traditions. 

Tickets to the Tony Mart’s reunion are $12. For information call (609) 653-6069.