I corresponded with Jim Klieforth of the Traits in 2009, about a year after writing about them in some detail in regard to the Ren-Vell Records Battle of the Bands LP. Below is our conversation from that time.

Jime Klieforth: My late brother [Charles Klieforth] was a bit of a wheeler-dealer who wasn’t musical but wanted to be in the rock business in some capacity, nurturing a fantasy of being an impresario. I’d been playing guitar and keyboards for a couple of years and our family home had an empty basement that was suitable for a group to rehearse in, so he sweet-talked me and the best musician-singers he knew into forming a group with him as manager. I’d never met any of these guys but was very impressed with the line-up’s talent and professionalism.

Back then, a group needed to have a couple of hours of material well rehearsed for public performances and we had enough musical common ground to pull that together within two weeks. My brother Chuck and his assistant, Don Reid, started aggressively pursuing work for the band and getting us publicity. Almost overnight, we were playing every local venue and from then on out, our rehearsals were jammed with our local contemporaries (mostly schoolgirls) eager to monitor our development. It was an odd and unexpected social change for all of us.

I wish I could say that we were friendly with other bands at that time but the truth is that we saw all of them as competition that needed to be vanquished. The Orphans, for example, who didn’t shine on the Renvell record, turned into a force to be reckoned with when Bobby Mayo (later of Peter Frampton fame) joined up.

We’d had a real advantage by starting out with a good rhythm section and an extraordinary guitarist (Dom Chicerchia, who left the band just before the Ted Mack show we did) but our competitors began acquiring skills at a pace that caused us to get very serious about playing well and refining all aspects of our performance. In an unfortunate reversal of what usually happens, the only recordings of the band were from very early on, before we really developed musically.

I was born in White Plains. Jimmy Carpenito of the Mystics told me Renvell’s studio was next to Gun Town on Central Ave, a store I vaguely remember from my childhood. Hard to believe there was a recording studio on Central Ave! I’m in Brooklyn, now, but my family’s still in White Plains and Yonkers.

As I recall it, Renvell was a second floor walkup, a big room that struck me, even then, as being quite low budget, a shoestring operation with cheap and/or antique equipment. Given how few records carry the Renvell label, I have to assume that most of their business was geared to commercial jingles for local businesses and radio play. I ran into the guy who ran it (I believe his name was Joe Renda) years later, when he owned Northlake Studios in White Plains.

I reminded him of the album and told him I’d been on it and he replied with a story that I thought at the time was an overblown fabrication. According to him, a couple of big DJ’s in England had fallen in love with the Battle of The Bands album and by repeatedly featuring it, had cultivated the development of the garage band sound there, setting the stage for punk. As he told it, the album was selling for $200.00 a pop there (in 1980 dollars) and “High On a Cloud” had received extensive airplay. It turned out that he’d been telling the truth, and the song became known well enough to end up being covered by the Pandoras. Since then it has been put on more compilations than I’ve been able to keep track of. In what is a common story about recordings of that era, no request for usage in these compilations has ever been requested from the band and no compensation has ever been forthcoming. Some of my former band mates are unhappy about this, but personally, I’m delighted that the recording has been archived and perpetuated as a minor archetype of the true garage band sound.

Q. When Dom left the band, who replaced him for the Ted Mack show, playing guitar behind his neck on the film?

That was Phil Daddona, who had to attempt to learn Dom’s “behind the neck” trick very quickly.  As you can see from the film, he wasn’t particularly adept at it, whereas Dom had been the pre-Hendrix master of it.

Jim Klieforth (2009)

The Traits on “High on a Cloud”:

Mike Carroll – lead vocals
Dom Chicherchia – lead guitar
Jim Klieforth – keyboard
Bob “Creature” Creaturo – guitar
Bobby Williams – drums
Unidentified bass player

The Traits on Ted Mack (July 31, 1967, aired Sept. 17, 1967):

Mike Carroll – lead vocals
Phil Daddona – lead guitar
Jim Klieforth – keyboard
Bob “Creature” Creaturo – guitar
Bobby Williams – drums
Artie Williams – bass

The band seems to have slowly split up, as Mike Carroll was drafted in ’68, but must have come back at some point to be the lead vocalist on the Nobody Loves the Hulk release, from 1969.

Bobby Williams reportedly died some years ago, details are unknown. Three other Traits members have passed: Bob Creaturo on September 12, 2014, Mike Carroll on March 15, 2018, and Dom Chicherchia on August 24, 2021.

More info can be found in the accompanying booklet to the Mojo-Bone release and Ugly Things #66.