THE STORY OF "ROY HEAD AND THE TRAITS"
By Dan Buie
........
October 2000
(Revised June - 2007)
Introduction....
In 1956, San Marcos, Texas was a much different place than it is today. The present Salt Grass, formerly Joe's Crab Shack, was the icehouse where you could buy ice by the block, and out back, high school and college students alike enjoyed diving into the falls of the beautifully clear headwaters of the ....San Marcos.. ..River..... San Marcos High School (SMHS) was located on ....Hutchison Street.... between Ranch Road 12 and ....Blanco Street..... There was discipline in the classrooms back then and respect was shown to teachers with "the paddle" being used from time to time when students got a bit too rambunctious.
Texas State University was known as Southwest Texas State Teachers' College with a student enrollment in each of the fall and spring semesters averaging around 2,100. A former student, Lyndon Johnson, who had represented San Marcos, Texas as part of his congressional district and who would later become President of the United States, was that year elected Majority Leader in the United States Senate.
In the 1956-1957 school year, the freshmen boys, when seniors, would take the SMHS Rattler Football Team to the school's first state football playoffs and lose a heartbreaker in the fog to Falfurius High School in Falfurius, Texas. One product of that team, Rattler Kenneth Halm, would spend New Years Day some four year's later chasing Roger Staubach (1963 Heisman Trophy Winner and Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboy Quarterback) around in the Dallas Cotton Bowl as the Longhorns whipped Navy to deliver Daryl Royal's first National Championship (1963) to the University of Texas.
1956-1957 was also the first year of integration in San Marcos, and school officials claimed that the school could not utilize black athletes in UIL competition. Subsequently, Lucious Jackson, a 6'7" freshman, would transfer from SMHS and the conservative community at the end of the school year to a high school in Louisiana where he could play basketball. He would later become the NBA "Rookie of the Year."
In 1956, Yul Brenner ("The King and I") bested, James Dean and Rock Hudson ("Giant") for Best Actor in the Academy Awards. Also that year, Roy Head and Tommy Bolton first became acquainted in the San Marcos High School parking lot. This story begins with the latter event, a seemingly insignificant and surely an unnoticed one.
Yet, the story of "Roy Head and the Traits" should be told, and it almost has to be told by someone who was there. This writing is only a brief sketch of the group's full story and the main characters in it. It is little more than an outline offering the reader a brief glimpse into the early days of Rock and Roll, a snapshot into the development of one such musical group which achieved a certain level of popularity, if not fame, but it is not just about that.
In its entirety, it would be a story about unexpected human potential, the love of music, a measured but supportive community, loves lost and loves found, the strikingly different paths the lives of 6 Central Texas boys took, and youthful bonds that have endured a half century to be once again realized as lifelong friendships. This story is an important part, albeit a small part, of not just Texas Music History, but also the history of San Marcos, Texas.
The Treys....
While one liked music and had a talent for dancing, the other was one of the very few high school students who knew how to play a guitar. How could anyone have guessed that this inauspicious meeting between Roy Head and Tommy Bolton was the beginning of what would later result in the most successful Rock & Roll and Rhythm and Blues group to ever emerge from the San Marcos area.
Gerry Gibson, a drummer in the high school band, joined the two and the trio began to play under the name of "The Treys." One Saturday morning in 1957, while the budding musical group was playing live at the local KCNY radio station in ....San Marcos...., the radio announcer mispronounced the name of the group, calling them "The Traits." Thus, the group acquired a name by accident that the original 6 Traits would later adopt as their own. ....
The Traits....
In 1957 when another young Texan's "rockabilly" styled song was at the top of the charts, Buddy Knoxs' "Party Doll," Roy Head, a junior at SMHS at the time, walked up to high school sophomore ..Dan B..uie in the hallway and introduced himself. ....Roy.... had heard Dan could play piano and ....Roy.... asked him, "Can you play by ear?" Dan said, "Yes."
A couple of days later Roy Head, Tommy Bolton, Gerry Gibson and Dan Buie gathered around the piano in the Buie's home on Hutchison Street and started working on a few rhythms and tunes. Several days later Dan and Roy invited sophomore Bill Pennington to play the bass, though Bill knew very little about playing a bass at the time and Roy also approached SMHS Senior, Clyde Causey to become the group's lead guitar player.
Thus, the original 6 Traits came into being: Roy Head (Vocals), Clyde Causey (Lead Guitar), Tommy Bolton (Rhythm Guitar), ..Dan B..uie (Piano), Gerry Gibson (Drums) and Bill Pennington (Bass).
Nicknames spontaneously arose over the years, which are used to this day among the group: Roy Head (Stevo), Tommy Bolton (....Reno....), Gerry Gibson (Sly), ..Dan B..uie (Huey), Clyde Causey (the Glide) and Bill Pennington (Hound Dog).
Sponsorship....
The teenagers began to dream big. They talked of playing at "sock hops," concerts, large dance halls, and of having a recording contract. However, they knew that in order to have any chance of doing any of this, they must obtain an adult sponsor. Someone who was respected and who knew about business was needed. So, Roy and Dan met with Edra Pennington (1913-2005) in her living room at the Pennington home on ....Comanche Street.... next to Pennington Funeral Home, and asked her to sponsor their effort. "Mrs. Pennington," as she was known in the community, asked several questions of the boys and they did the best they could to tell her of their hopes for the group. Edra did not give an immediate answer. She told Roy and Dan that she wanted to speak with the parents of all the boys involved and that she would visit with them again the following week.
The whole group was on "pins and needles" the entire time while Edra contacted each parent to discuss the project. Dan remembers the call to his home from Edra one evening during supper, and Dan's dad spoke with her. After the telephone conversation Dan asked his dad, Dr. TR Buie (1909-2000), if she was going to do it. His dad said, "I don't know. She asked me if I would help and I told her that if there was something I could do, I would but that I do not know anything about music and cannot even carry a tune."
Little did Dr. Buie know that his agreement to assist would result in him traveling with the group every Friday and Saturday night for over a year to the concert auditoriums and dance halls across ....Texas..... Finally, Mrs. Pennington summoned Dan and Roy back to the Pennington home to inform them that she had decided to help the fledgling group.
The First Recordings
What followed is now a matter of recorded music history, http://rcs.law.emory.edu/rcs/artists/t/trai7000.htm , the breadth and depth of which these talented young men could hardly have imagined at the time. The original songs written primarily in collaboration between Bolton, Buie, Gibson and Head, the Traits were one of a very few groups who, without a mega-company like RCA or Capital Records behind them, would impact the rock music industry in significant ways in the late '50s and 1960s. Roy Head and Gerry Gibson, specifically, would continue their musical contributions to national Pop and Country and Western music through the 1980s while Roy Head, even to this day, is a highly sought after performer.
In the beginning, Edra arranged bookings for the group, bought the boys outfits to wear, gave them gas money, furnished transportation and traveled with them everywhere during the first year. And Edra negotiated a recording contract with Tanner 'N' Texas (TNT) Records in ....San Antonio.., ..Texas..... During this period Clyde Causey graduated from SMHS and decided to join the Navy. Edra even found the group a replacement lead guitar player in George Frazier (1941-1996) of Luling, Texas. Therefore, the names listed on The Traits earliest recordings are "Head – Gibson – Bolton – Frazier – Buie - Pennington."
About the same time Texan Bruce Channel's "Hey Baby" was No. 1 on the charts and within weeks of the ill-fated airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, The Traits would release their first recording. The year was 1959 and "One More Time" would become the first Texas hit of the Traits. Many would later speculate that had TNT had the network for national distribution that "One More Time" would almost certainly have been a Top 40 chart hit nationwide. It soared into the Top 5 on ....Houston....'s premier rock station, KILT, KTSA in San Antonio and KLIF in Dallas. Other leading rock radio stations in North Central, Central and ..South Texas also picked up on the tune.
Invitations began to roll in for the group and they themselves reveled in their newly found popularity. They played with some of the biggest named rock and rollers and blues men of the day: Roy Orbison, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Reed, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bobby Blue Bland, and BB King, to name a few. Police escorts often had to assist them through crowds after their concert appearances. Dance halls holding upwards of 1000 people were over-flowing for the dances at which the talented lads played and they were turning down ..five to ten.. invitations to every one they accepted.
A few months later in 1959 The Traits struck again with their second regional hit, "Live It Up." It, too, catapulted into the top ten on all the prominent rock stations in ....Texas.... and started spreading to surrounding states. KONO in ....San Antonio.... designated it as the station's "Pick Of The Week," which meant it was KONO's selection to become a future No. 1 song. The demand for their music intensified and now The Traits began to receive out-of-state invitations including contact from the East and ....West.. ..Coasts..... However, the group was pretty much limited to where they could drive on a Friday and Saturday night. On a few occasions, they flew, but 98% of their transportation was by automobile.
Even though the opportunity was enormous, the boys' parents felt the Traits invitation from Dick Clark's American Bandstand had come a few years too early and so it was refused. After all, they were minors. Bill and Dan were still in high school. Their education-minded parents were not about to let any of them go to ....Philadelphia, New York City.... or ....Los Angeles.... to perform. In addition, Mrs. Pennington and Dr. Buie were becoming road weary from the two years of traveling every Friday and Saturday night with the group.
"Roy Head and the Traits"
In 1960, Roy told the group that music was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Most of the group did not feel that way. Most wanted to either go to college or to become involved in some type of skilled vocation other than music. The Rock & Roll was great, but no one it seemed at the time really thought of it as a life's profession, except for Roy. Roy asked if his name might be placed out front to help promote him and give him a start in the business.
Except for the replacement of Clyde Causey with George Frazier, the original 6 Traits were still intact. The relationship between The Traits could best be characterized as one fueled by friendship, mutual respect and love of music. In the years to follow as the original Traits moved on and other musicians began to play with and influence the group, other elements of motivation would be involved with some of the other players, which would usher in troubles for both Roy and Gerry in the years to come. At the time the boys understood Roy's desires all too well, and started performing as "Roy Head and The Traits." The group had released their third and fourth records, the A sides being "My Baby's Fine" and "Summertime Love." "My Baby's Fine" struggled, but "Summertime Love" had jumped into the Top 10 on the bell-weather rock stations in Texas and surrounding States. This was also during a period when Roy Head and The Traits began experimenting with their sound and in 1961 added two saxophone players (McCumber and Charron) for the TNT recording of "Walking All Day."
Studio controversies did occasionally occur, especially regarding the song "Yes I Do," a Traits original written by Dan Buie and the B side of Live It Up, which lost all of its 20 measure musical introduction. Despite repeated protests from "The Traits," the production engineers at TNT Records refused to mix the song due to its lengthy musical introduction. Therefore, the song was ultimately released without its introduction. Over the next 3 to 5 years, the elongated musical approach, though unheard of in 1959, would become a technique commonly used in the pop music industry.
"The Traits" would record additional music at TNT and in 1962 began laying down some tracks at Renner Recording Company also in San Antonio, including their versions of "Got My Mojo Working" and "Linda Lou," as well as other original works.
Independent discographies compiled on The Traits/Roy Head and The Traits/Roy Head albums released since 1964 which contain some of their original music recorded at TNT between 1958 and 1961 include: TNT TLP 101 1965 (US), TNT TLP101 1981 (US), Bear Family BFX 15307 1988 (GER), P-Vine PCD-1610 1988 (JPN), Domino LP 1011 1992 (US), Varese 5618 1995 (US), Collectables CD 0668 1996 (US), Edsell EDCD 598 1999 (UK), Edsell EDCD 612 1999 (UK), Dynamite CD 101 1999 (US), AIM 1307 2000 (US), Fuel 2000 Records 061580 2006 (US), and finally Fuel 2000 Records 061668 2007 (US).
"Battle of the Bands"
These types of events were popular in the 1960s and The Traits would participate in them from time to time. The Traits and The Moods from Luling, Texas, and a budding musical group from Rosenberg, Texas were two of the favorites seem to be the favoites of the day. Once The Traits were comfortable with the sound of this new group from Rosenburg, they began referring some of their surplus booking requests to the new band and did a couple of "Battle of the Bands" dances with them to help the group acquire additional recognition. The newcomers progressed quickly and gave themselves the name, "The Triumphs." In subsequent years the group would be known as, "BJ Thomas and the Triumphs."
A year after Roy Head and the Traits hit the top of the charts, BJ Thomas and the Triumphs would make their first appearance on the pop chart with a Hank Williams remake, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." The year was 1966. BJ would later meet and record with one of the most talented pop songwriters and composers of the 20th Century, Burt Bacharach … and now, you know the rest of the story.
Musical Influences
Elvis's country rock style, Chuck Berry's blistering guitar riffs, Ricky Nelson's crooning, Little Richard's "bang it out" Rock & Roll and Roy Orbison's voice of velvet all had their measure of influence on The Traits. Yet it was the back street blues and sweaty rock-n-roll sounds that most intrigued and attracted the teenagers: Fat's Domino, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddlie, Jimmy Reed, Bobby Blue Bland, and Ray Charles.
With their country roots running deep and rock n' roll emerging as the national teenage pastime, The Traits followed the rockabilly leads of Elvis, Buddy Holly and the Crickets and Jerry Lee (the Killer) Lewis in the mid to late 1950s era. After all, what was/is "rockabilly" but a blend of country, blues and gospel often presented with a boogie woogie tempo.
When The Traits recorded "One More Time" and "Live It Up," they were both little more than countrified up-tempo blues songs. The piano sound was more associated with "the Killer" and the guitars gave off riffs and licks more akin to an Eddie Cochran or a Duane Eddie style of guitar play, and Gerry added solid drum grooves to achieve the rock beat effect of the day. But as the younger generation's music changed, so did The Traits' sound.
Musical Transition
When Dan entered the army and left The Traits in 1962, The Traits did not recruit another piano man and had already added a couple of saxophone players trying to acheive just the right sound. Tommy Bolton and George Frazier had preceded Dan in their departures from the group and both were replaced with other guitar players who had somewhat different styles of guitar play.
At this point, only Roy Head, Gerry Gibson, and Bill Pennington remained of the original 6 Traits. Their music had become closer in style to the big blues band sounds of a Bobby Blue Bland or a Ray Charles, but with a country influence.
With the exceptions of Roy Head and Gerry Gibson there were essentially two groups of Traits. The 1st group (1957-1962) produced the first regional hits at TNT Records and some of these members also started with the recordings made at Renner Recording Company in 1962. Some of the 2nd group (1963-1965) began recording at Renner also and were still around for the hits recorded in Houston and released on Back Beat Records in 1965.
A handful of musicians were in and out of the group at various times as Roy Head and The Traits searched for a special sound they wanted for their recordings. Two of the more important musicians to the musical group actually made most of their contributions between the first and second group of Traits, 1962-1964.
They were David McCumber and Danny Gomez, the talented saxophone players. McCumber and Gomez were students at Texas State University (then SWTSTC) in San Marcos, TX. Danny Gomez, a virtuoso with all reed instruments, also had a special knack for musical arrangements. It was McCumber and Gomez more than anyone else, who laid the groundwork for the use of horns in the music of Roy Head and The Traits.
Examples of this transitional music can be heard when listening to Roy Head and The Traits last TNT release, "Walking All Day," or their version of "Linda Lou" recorded and released in 1962 by Renner Records. "Linda Lu" scored another hit which again spread beyond Texas and into the regional States.
Roy Head and The Traits began to achieve the sound they were seeking, and in large measure it was the way in which horns were used on the recording of "Just A Little Bit" that contributed to it charting in 1965, and "Treat Her Right" being the smash hit it turned out to be. At last report David McCumber works at Sears and Roebuck in Austin, TX while Dr. Danny Gomez would spend most of his professional career training educational counselors in Texas.
In 1963, Bill Pennington, who had long since become an accomplished bass man would leave the group after his marriage. He was replaced by Gene Kurtz, an unusually gifted musician, who along with Roy Head and Gerry Gibson, would later put a chorus, lyrics and a pumping beat to a guitar riff that had been created some 4 years earlier by lead guitarist George Frazier. Some said George stumbled upon it when he bungled the Mash Potatoes guitar riff. The original Traits had played this unnamed riff-run as a "break song."
It would be this refined Frazier guitar riff put to a blasting Danny Gomez horn break, Roy Head and Gene Kurtz lyrics and a thumpin'/pumpin' Gibson drum groove that would launch Roy Head and The Traits onto the national landscape in a profound way.
Treat Her Right
Although Roy Head and Gerry Gibson were the only 2 remaining from the original 6 pals who started The Traits, the band continued to perform and enter into contracts under the name of Roy Head and The Traits. By the time "Treat Her Right" was recorded at Gold Star Studio in Houston, TX, Frazier and Gomez, each of whom had made significant contributions to the song, had departed the band. The group which recorded the international smash hit were Roy Head, Gerry Gibson, Gene Kurtz, Frank Miller, Johnny Clark, Tommy May and Ronnie Barton.
After 7 years of musical development while Roy Head honed his hard-hitting showmanship style beginning in the hallways of San Marcos High School, after thousands of
performances, tens of thousands of miles traveled and numerous Texas/regional hits on 2 different record labels, it all came together following Christmas 1964 when Roy Head and The Traits entered the now historic Gold Star Studios at 5626 Brock, Houston, TX. It was there under the tutelage of famed ....Texas.... producer Huey P. Meaux that the tracks for "Treat Her Right" and two other Top 40 songs were laid down, two of which would later be released on the Back Beat label. But just as the 1960 invitation to the teeanagers from Dick Clark's American Bandstand arrived a couple of years too early, so too did the "British Invasion." In February 1964 a plane carrying a little known musical group from Liverpool, England would touch down at New York's JFK Airport.
The group's name, with the emphasis on "Beat...," was first suggested as a tribute name to an earlier Texas band, Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Over the next 10 years a British rock group known as the Rolling Stones and a psycho-social phenomena known as "Beatlemania" would sweep not just America, Europe and the Pacific Rim, but crack the Iron Curtain, changing both the culture and the music of rock n roll forever.
In the Fall of 1965, "Treat Her Right" took the music nation by storm, rising quickly to the No. 2 position on both the Pop and Rhythm and Blues National Charts. The Beatles "Help" was perched at No. 1. In the same year the Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction" had dominated the No. 1 chart spot for weeks on end, who could have known that another all time classic, except this time by the Beatles, would be simultaneously headed up the chart as "Treat Her Right" sat at No. 2 and ready to take over the No. 1 spot?
As for the Traits, they felt sure their song would outlast "Help" and become No. 1. It did outlast "Help," but it did not become No. 1. Instead, a little tune entitled "Yesterday" would leap-frog to the top position and "Treat Her Right" by Roy Head and the Traits would hang at No. 2 never to reach the No. 1 billboard spot. "Treat Her Right" maintained at No. 2 for 8 weeks and in the top 5 for 16 weeks, which at the time was longer than any other song in history.
By the Summer of 1966 it had sold 1,000,000 copies and by last count is estimated to have sold over 4,000,000. It produced a "Gold Record" and would later be used as a motion picture trailer song in at least a dozen movies and be the featured song in the movie, "The Commitments."
The other two songs which had been recorded and which subsequently reached the Top 40 on the pop charts later in 1965 were "Just A Little Bit" and "Apple Of My Eye."
The Double Edged Sword
The success of "Treat Her Right" cut both ways for Roy Head. Just before the chart-making hits were recorded in Houston, Roy had reluctantly signed a "partnership agreement" with the rest of the band members, some of whom were little more than "johnny come latelies" to the musical group who were either unaware or cared little about the tradition and history of the band which began as high school comaraderie, fueled by their collective love of music and encouraged by a supportive San Marcos community. To understand how the front man came to sign the contract with the band, one would need to understand more about the personality of Roy Head than this brief history can reveal. Suffice it to say that he has always had a genuine affection for friendship, and in some cases, what he preceived as friendship, a laudable trait in many circumstances, but it would work against him in this instance where preceived self-interest on the part of several members of the group who recorded "Treat Her Right" trumped any remnants of appreciation for those who had contributed to the music before them or any loyalty they may have had to Roy Head himself.
Because of its international blockbuster impact, performance opportunities never before available to the band came in abundance causing disagreements between Head and some members of the Traits, group 2. So acute was the consternation that law suits were filed against Head. Just as this talented son of farm migrant workers stood at the threshold of immortal stardom, his momentum was snapped as he was pulled down into a maze of litigation and restraining orders, the implications of which the 'devil may care' Head did not fully grasp. He would crack the Pop Charts Top 100 just once more in 1971.
Today, Roy speaks of the period rather philosophically saying of the malcontents in the Traits, group 2, "We had our differences and we parted ways." The real tragedy, however, is that the law suits basically "grounded" Roy from taking advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities presented to him as "Treat Her Right" sat at No. 2 in US and was beginning to get significant play in Europe.
Fallout
At the same time, trying to cash-in on the popularity of Roy Head and The Traits while the band was at the top of the charts, the earlier 10 songs of The Traits, group 1, were ridiculously overdubbed. This overdubbed issue can be heard to this day on TLP 101, Roy Head and the Traits first album. Many of the album covers of the release have the TNT logo on the front, but say "Distributed by Scepter" on the back of the cover. It has never been clear what company did the overdubbing and if they had permission to do so. What is for certain is that The Traits never gave their permission.
TLP 101 was released by both TNT and Scepter while at the same time "One More Time" was re-released by TNT on label 194 in 1965 as well as by Scepter on label 12117 in 1965 and again by Scepter (12138) in 1966. It has been estimated that since this was at the height of the group's popularity, that the resulting sales cumulatively rang up into the six figures. Two Tons of Steel, out of San Antonio, TX, covered the song on the Palo Duro label as late as 2000 on both CD and DVD. Joe "King" Carrasco had a hit with "One More Time," modified to the punk rock style. It was released on Hanibal Records (US) in 1981 and was also a hit in the UK on Stiff Records in that same year. The Traits/Roy Head and the Traits actually recorded four versions of "One More Time" themselves and two of those versions as well as the overdubbed version on TNT 101 would be released in the decades to follow on countless albums in the US, Germany, Japan, the UK and Australia. However, the (original) Traits, who had always received royalty checks from TNT on their record sales and station turns prior to 1964, never received another nickel from that date forward to the present time. What happened to the monetary rewards associated with the Traits registered BMI "writers/composers rights" remains a mystery to this day?
Like a Phoenix, "The Roy Head Trio" emerged from the turmoil of personal animosity and prolonged litigation involving some members of The Traits, group 2. By late 1966 the bright glow of the Back Beat hits had subsided. Roy Head, Gerry Gibson and Gene Kurtz, who had stuck together through the preceeding months, formed the nucleus of the group and added a talented guitar player to the mix in David "Hawk" Koon. Back Beat Records released The Roy Head Trio's only recording in 1966: Your (Almost) Tough with Tush Hog on the backside. They performed for about a year and a half before Roy started pursing his career as a solo performer.
The exceptionally talented drummer for the original Traits, Gerry Gibson, would go on to play with some of the periods most notable marque names: Linda Ronstadt, Glen Campbell, and an 18 month stay with Sly And The Family Stone. Also, Trait Gene Kurtz, one of the finest bassist in the country, plays professionally as of this writing and regularly tours with progressive country star, Dale Watson.
Click here to watch Roy" mce_href=">Click here to watch Roy" mce_href=">
"They Want Us To Do What!?" – Gerry Gibson to Dan Buie
After not having played together in almost 40 years, the original 6 Traits reunited for Y2001. They had second and final reunion in 2007 at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX. Bob Timmers, Curator of the The Hall of Fame, flew to San Marcos for the event and inducted Roy Head and the (original) Traits into The Rockabilly Hall of Fame.