Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EARLY ROCK 'N' ROLL: Claude Trenier dies; lounge sound pioneer

Entertainer's band performed on Las Vegas Strip since 1940s

Claude Trenier Entertainer formed the Treniers with his brother Clifford and Don Hill

Claude Trenier, the animated entertainer who pioneered the swingin' Vegas lounge sound and helped define rock 'n' roll in the early 1950s, died Monday of cancer. He was 84.

As the driving force of the Treniers, a group he formed with his twin brother Clifford and college classmate Don Hill, Trenier first worked on the Strip in the late 1940s and continued to be a fixture of Las Vegas and Atlantic City lounges until last year.

"I can't imagine how many shows they did and how many people enjoyed them over the years," Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt said Tuesday. "Claude was definitely among the pioneers of our Las Vegas entertainment scene."

"We had no hit records per se," says Skip Trenier, Claude's nephew who performed with the group since 1959. "We just performed as an act, but the act was solid. It was like a three-ring circus."

Trenier's last Las Vegas performance was in a special one-night show at The Orleans on Nov. 12, 2002, with his golden-age peers Freddie Bell and Sonny Turner. His final performances were a showroom engagement at the Sands in Atlantic City in August, with Bell and Sam Butera.

The group officially retired in mid-2002, but Trenier noted a few months later: "When you retire, the first thing you have is a stroke. I keep moving."

However, it was bladder cancer that spread to his liver that caught up to the entertainer. He was hospitalized Sept. 12 and remained under medical care until his death Monday evening at Nathan Adelson Hospice.

"By the time he went into the hospital, it was just too late to do anything," said Ken Sands, the group's road manager. Trenier didn't want his illness publicized. "He was a private and proud person," Sands said.

Claude and Clifford were identical twins born in Mobile, Ala., on July 14, 1919. In 1939, they enrolled in Alabama State College to prepare for careers in teaching. They met saxophonist Hill there and formed their first band, dropping out of school in 1941.

World War II scattered the group, and Claude joined Jimmie Lunceford's band in 1944. He made his first recordings, "I'm Gonna See My Baby" and "That Someone Must Be You," with Lunceford's band. The latter started to catch on just when Claude was drafted, so Clifford stepped in as a replacement.

After the war, both twins worked for Lunceford before spinning off on their own. Their first recording for the OKeh label, "Go! Go! Go!", was recorded in 1951 and "was one of the first real rock 'n' roll records to come out of New York," author Nick Tosches wrote in the liner notes of an OKeh compilation. "Though it was to be their only, short-lived hit, it was the beginning of their period of greatest influence."

The Treniers and Bill Haley worked side by side in Wildwood, N.J., clubs promoting the phrase rock 'n' roll. The Treniers came up with song titles such as "Rockin' is Our Business" and "It Rocks! It Rolls! It Swings!"

"Rock and roll hadn't got big yet. It was really rhythm and blues ... mostly triplets," Trenier recalled in the 1990s. "The white kids would listen to it because their parents didn't want them to listen to it."

While "rock" would go on to be defined more by the electric guitar sound and Elvis Presley, the Treniers would become a cornerstone of the Strip's swinging lounge sound.

Trenier did not recall the date the group first played Las Vegas, but he guessed it was in 1947 at the Flamingo, setting up in the casino beside a free buffet after finishing their short showroom act with Myron Cohen.

"We just liked to play. We would have played for nothing," he recalled. It was "more or less the forerunner of lounge."

The act started visiting Las Vegas more and more in the early '50s, becoming more or less a permanent fixture by 1955.

"I brought half of their material to Vegas with me," said Bell, who arrived in 1953. "I think all the groups back East, we all copied them."

The Treniers are featured in the 1956 movies "Don't Knock the Rock" and "The Girl Can't Help It." Their Hollywood connection was B-movie producer Sam Katzman, who shared the Treniers' affinity for betting on horse races.

Trenier admitted the horses and a similar zeal for keno kept him from accumulating significant wealth, even though the group was pulling down $10,000 to $12,000 per week at its height in the '50s.

"I know the racetracks and keno will miss him," Bell said jokingly Tuesday. "I want to make sure he has a few keno tickets in his jacket" when he is buried.

Bell and Skip Trenier are planning a local memorial service; details are not yet available. Trenier probably will be buried in California.

Hill, the group's last original member, still lives in Las Vegas. Clifford died in Las Vegas, also of cancer, in March 1983. Claude never married and is survived by four of his nine siblings.