Hayes Pillars was born on April 30, 1906 in North Little Rock, Arkansas and began playing tenor saxophone as a teenager. Playing locally around Little Rock and Jackson, Tennessee initially, Hayes joined the territory band of Alphonse Trent in 1927. A year later he was back freelancing until he united with his boyhood friend James Jeter and organized the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra in Cleveland, Ohio.

Pillars secured a six-week engagement in 1934 at the Club Plantation in St. Louis, becoming so popular that they stayed for eleven years. The band was so influential that some…