Donn Trenner

The pianist Donn Trenner came up in the ranks of early bebop pianists and appears on nearly 100 jazz albums from 1950 forward. His instrumental talents include dabbling in unique keyboard instruments such as the celeste as well as use of the cello, and he eventually became almost even better known for his activities as a conductor and musical arranger for a variety of vocalists and television show hosts. His most famous gig along the latter lines was leading the band on the Steve Allen Show, which was the original prototype for the incredibly popular Tonight Show. In his early career, Trenner's home base of Connetticut put him in within easy riffing reach of New York City and its busy jazz scene. As a combo pianist, he worked with players such as Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Oscar Pettiford, Dave Pell, Howard McGhee, Charles Mingus and Ben Webster, some of this playing taking place after he relocated to the west coast. His eventual finesse conducting large groups was no doubt polished while playing piano in jazz big bands led by Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey and Les Brown. The Brown band became a ticket into another type of show business entirely, one that would prove to have a much larger audience than the experimental bebop sound. Brown went to work for comedian Bob Hope, taking the talented Trenner with him and resulting in engagements as a combination music director, pianist and arranger for Lena Horne, Nancy Wilson, Jack Jones, Dick Haymes, Ann-Margret and the Allen television assignment. Outside of network studios, work with vocalists Wilson and Ann-Margret often led to sojourns in Las Vegas. One of Trenner's greatest assets to performers is apparently his perfectionism; he is often willing to sacrifice great amounts of his own time to make sure a project, or...