[2] The Traits had several regional hits at TNT, with songs such as "One More Time", "Live It Up", both released in 1959, and "Summertime Love" (1960),[3] establishing themselves in the late 1950s and the early 1960s as one of the premier teenage Texas-based rock and roll bands while playing the concert, sock hop, college and university and dance hall circuits throughout Texas.
During this period, the parents of The Traits turned down Dick Clark's invitation for the boys to appear on American Bandstand, which ABC had started broadcasting nationwide from Philadelphia in 1957.
[4] In 1961 and 1962, The Traits added saxophonists David McCumber and Danny Gomez to the line-up and produced additional Texas/regional hits from Renner Records, a label owned by Jessie Schneider of San Antonio.
2108, a subsidiary of United Artists Records, distributed The Traits' version of Ray Sharpe's 1959 "Linda Lu", with "Little Mama" by Dan Buie and Head on the B-side.
[5] By the time the 1962 recordings were taped and mastered at Jeff Smith's Texas Sound Studio in San Antonio for the Renner label, Johnny Clark and Frank Miller had replaced Frazier and Bolton at lead and rhythm guitars, respectively.
Tommy Bolton organized and played with other Central Texas musical groups while both he and Clyde Causey launched careers with the Department of the Treasury.
David McCumber pursued his love of music at Sound Master's studio in Houston and then opened a real estate company in Austin.
The songwriting talents, and subsequent recording successes, of The (original) Traits during their first five years on a regional level were under the watchful eyes of Ms. Edra Pennington (1913–2005)[7] and Dr. T.R.
Along with Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally" and Steve Cropper's "In the Midnight Hour", in the successful 1991 motion picture, The Commitments.
[20] It was also recorded in 1988 by George Thorogood and the Destroyers and released the same year as a music video in which Head had an acting cameo and danced in the final chorus.
Because he was white, but his footwork included moves popular among African American gymnastic dancers, he was sometimes said to be a practitioner of "blue-eyed soul".
[25] The chart-makers recorded and released on the Back Beat and Scepter labels spelled the end of Head's association with what has come to be thought of as the "second group" of Traits.
Later releases by Head on Dunhill and Elektra contained elements of rockabilly and psychedelic rock, but by the mid-1970s his solo career had led him to country.
After releasing the 1970 cult classic "Same People That You Meet Going Up You Meet Coming Down" on Dunhill Records, Head's music reached the U.S. country music Top 100 24 times by the mid-1980s,[27] while landing three Top 20 hits: "The Most Wanted Woman in Town", (1975)[28] "Come To Me" and "Now You See Em, Now You Don't" both in 1977 and recorded on the ABC/Dot label reaching No.
[22] The earliest blues-styled, and rockabilly-styled recordings of The Traits, were primarily written in a collaboration between Bolton, Buie, Gibson, and Roy Head.
[32] Johnny Winter later re-released the track of "Tramp" he recorded with The Traits in his 1988 compilation album, Birds Can't Row Boats.
[34] Both reunions involved performances at Kent Finlay's Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos[35] an early musical hangout of George Strait.
[34] During their October 2007 sold-out Golden Anniversary Concert appropriately billed as "Roy Head and The Traits – For The Last Time" at Texas State University, Roy Head and The (original) Traits were inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame[36] by the Hall's Curator, Bob Timmers.