Biography
Twin brothers Cliff and Claude Trenier, both born on 14 July 1919 in Mobile, Alabama, USA, first assembled the Alabama State Collegians while attending college in the 1930s and took the ensemble on tour following their 1941 graduation. In 1943 Claude departed to succeed Dan Grissom as ballad singer in Jimmie Lunceford’s Orchestra, with Cliff joining the same unit the next year; Claude additionally contributed vocals to 1946 sessions led by Barney Bigard and Charles Mingus. The pair launched their own small group in 1947, featuring Don Hill on alto saxophone and Gene Gilbeaux on piano, and under the name Trenier Twins cut sides for Mercury Records before moving to Chord in 1949 and London Records in 1950. By 1951 their brothers Milt and Buddy had joined, transforming the act into a quartet that recorded for OKeh Records from 1951 to 1955, then for RCA Records’ Vik subsidiary in 1956, Brunswick Records in 1957 and Dot Records in 1958.
Having become the premier visual attraction of early rock ’n’ roll and prompting imitators such as the Comets and the Bellboys, the Treniers appeared in several landmark rock ’n’ roll films, most notably Don’t Knock The Rock and The Girl Can’t Help It, and reached Europe in 1958 as the opening act on Jerry Lee Lewis’s ill-fated tour. During the 1960s they gradually shifted toward supper-club work, issuing albums on Hermitage, TT and their own Mobile label. Following Cliff’s death in 1983, Claude kept the Treniers active alongside older brother Buddy, who died in 1999, nephew Skip on vocals and Don Hill on alto saxophone, maintaining a performance schedule until two months prior to his own death from cancer in November 2003 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Having become the premier visual attraction of early rock ’n’ roll and prompting imitators such as the Comets and the Bellboys, the Treniers appeared in several landmark rock ’n’ roll films, most notably Don’t Knock The Rock and The Girl Can’t Help It, and reached Europe in 1958 as the opening act on Jerry Lee Lewis’s ill-fated tour. During the 1960s they gradually shifted toward supper-club work, issuing albums on Hermitage, TT and their own Mobile label. Following Cliff’s death in 1983, Claude kept the Treniers active alongside older brother Buddy, who died in 1999, nephew Skip on vocals and Don Hill on alto saxophone, maintaining a performance schedule until two months prior to his own death from cancer in November 2003 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.