Don Hill, saxophonist with The Treniers, dies

Don Hill, whose music career took him from playing Mardi Gras as a teenager to more than five decades as a member of the pioneering lounge and rock ‘n’ roll group The Treniers, has died.

Hill, who would have turned 100 on Nov. 2, died Friday morning at his home, according to Jeanne Brei, a longtime friend and fellow performer who co-wrote Hill’s memoir and performed regularly with him in his later years.

Hill brought to the Treniers, and then to rock and roll’s DNA, “that whole high-energy, super-strong, sexy sax,” Brei said. “And it influenced music for 20 or 30 years.

“The Treniers created a sound and it became rock and roll. That’s a pretty good legacy.”

“Anybody who was a Treniers fan will remember Don Hill,” said Sonny Charles, former lead singer of The Checkmates, who met Hill in 1964 while both of their bands were playing Las Vegas.

“He was such a terrific sax player,” Charles said. “And the arrangements for their songs, the way they were arranged, he played a big part in that. He was pretty much one of the architects of that act, the musical part of it.”

“If you watched the act, it seemed like he was sort of freestyling — he would be riffing along with the song. But, actually, his stuff was so in tune with whatever they were doing. He was part of that whole sound.”

Hill was born in Texas and raised in New Orleans. He started playing trumpet when he was 6 and switched to saxophone in his teens, and his first professional gig was playing on a Mardi Gras float at age 14. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2013 that the gig earned him $15 for 14 hours of work.

At 18, Hill received a music scholarship to Alabama State University, where he played in the swing, military and concert bands. Starting in 1943, he spent three years touring the country with Louis Armstrong’s big band.

After leaving Armstrong and before joining The Treniers, Hill visited Las Vegas for the first time, playing in Gerald Wilson’s orchestra at The Tradewinds. He formed his own band for a short time before accepting an offer from Cliff and Claude Trenier to join a band they were forming.

“I can tell you the date I joined. It was Jan. 9, 1948,” Hill told the Review-Journal in 2013. “I played with them until 2003, when Claude died (Cliff had died in 1983). That was the end of The Treniers.”

The Treniers was an R&B band that helped to create the genre of rock ‘n’ roll with a roster of songs during the late ’40s and ’50s that included “Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song),” “Rockin’ Is Our Bizness,” “Rocking on Saturday Night” and “It Rocks! It Rolls! It Swings!”

In 2013, Hill recalled the band playing in New Jersey in 1950. “Bill Haley was playing across the street,” and came to watch the band play. “He was in a cowboy band then. It was Bill Haley and The Saddlemen.”

Haley liked the band’s sound and gave it one of his own songs to record. The Treniers’ version of “Rock-a-Beaten Boogie” was released in 1953. Bill Haley and His Comets’ version of the song, which came out the following year, did better in sales, but Hill said Haley did a later take that incorporated the style of The Treniers’ version.

The Treniers — named for their twin-brother front men — also were pioneers of Las Vegas’ lounge scene. The group’s exuberant performance style was captured in a handful of movies, including “Don’t Knock the Rock” in 1957 and “The Girl Can’t Help It” in 1956.

The Treniers’ credo was to play everything, “but make it swing,” Hill said.

“We were visual,” Hill told the Review-Journal in 2016. “You can’t capture that on a record. You had to see us.”

While playing saxophone for The Treniers for 55 years, Hill toured the world and played nearly every lounge on the Las Vegas Strip. The Treniers opened for Redd Foxx, Bobby Darin and Jerry Lewis — a classic performance with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin still can be found on YouTube — and frequently were booked 52 weeks a year.

Hill, who moved to Las Vegas in 1959, saw the city grow from an outpost of scattered two-level resorts to high-rises and megaresorts, and evolve from the days when African-American performers couldn’t stay in the hotels at which they performed.

“In 1960 there were only three places on the Strip,” Hill said. “There was the Flamingo, the Frontier and El Rancho Vegas. We were working the Frontier one night when the El Rancho burned down. I told the drummer to play a drum solo, and the rest of the band went out and watched the fire.”

After he stopped playing with The Treniers, Hill teamed up with “Jazzin’” Jeanne Brei to form The Speakeasy Swingers. Brei also co-wrote Hill’s 2012 biography, “House Party Tonight: The Career of Legendary Saxophonist Don Hill” with author Dennis Griffin.

Hill continued playing well into his late 90s, on the Strip and at the Italian American Club and at regular jam sessions with friends. Brei said he played as late as at his 97th birthday party and another gig two months later.

Survivors include his wife, Gloria, daughters Donna and Denise, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. A family member said services had not been set as of Friday afternoon.

Contact John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.