The Trophies & Rock and Roll
It was 55 years ago that the Brattleboro-based rock n roll group, The Trophies recorded their first record, ‘Walkin’ the Dog’. According to Discogs.com, “The Trophies hailed from Brattleboro, Vermont and got together sometime in 1963, before the British Invasion. Their first outing on vinyl was ‘Walking The Dog’ / ‘Somethin’ Else’ recorded in early 1964. It was a very popular record in their locale reaching the #1 spot on both WBZ and WMEX in Boston, MA. The band members were: Jack Dunham, Paul Olbum, Richard Eriksen, Wayne Harvey and Tom Howes.”
According to Jack Dunham, the group’s drummer, the English Invasion was just beginning in the spring of 1964…the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and their song “I Want To Hold Your Hand” hit number 1 across the country. It was in this environment that the Trophies adapted the rhythm and blues song “Walkin the Dog” to the Beatles-type sound and recorded it in Boston.
Wayne Harvey started the Trophies when he was just 14 by recruiting other members, Rick Ericksen, Tom Howes and Jack Dunham. Rick would be on bass and keyboard, Tom on lead guitar and Jack on drums. Harvey took his spot as the lead singer and also played guitar.
We invited the three living members of the Trophies to sit and talk with us a year ago. They are Jack Dunham, Richard Ericksen and Wayne Harvey. Two of the five members of the Trophies have passed away…Paul Oblum and Tom Howes. Richard Erikson and Wayne Harvey live a town or two away from Brattleboro and Jack now spends winters in Florida.
With the popularity of their new hit single, the Trophies bought a used van from R.S. Roberts, had it painted to look ‘mod’ and headed on the road to gigs in places like Saratoga, NY and Boston. On these tours the Trophies would perform their songs and also act as the backup band for other artists. Jack Dunham says he most enjoyed backing up Chubby Checker and Del Shannon but they also played with notables the Shirelles, Dionne Warwick and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
Often The Trophies performed at the Hampton Manor, a nightclub just across the Vt./N.Y. border, that drummer Jack Dunham recalled, “was a very volatile nightclub.” On Wednesday nights, called “Star Night”, The Manor would bring a national act in each week. Sometimes the Trophies backed an artist. On other occasions, The Trophies opened for an artist. According to Eriksen, “We played for all of them. Chubby Checker and then Fats Domino came and we opened for him. We didn’t play with him, obviously, but we opened for most bands.”
Wayne Harvey’s singing style worked well with Del Shannon tunes, “So we backed him up,” said Eriksen. “We knew his material, he showed up with a guitar and I don’t think he had an amp or anything, so he just got on stage with us and we backed him up and he said we did a great job. They took some pictures of us with Del Shannon. He was the only friendly one involved.”
Harvey says, “At The Manor they called us the ‘house band’ for the whole summer. That’s what we were, the house band, and that might mean we’d play for the lunch hour through the afternoon, then go back at night, then we’d have plenty of time in the afternoon to goof off, practice . . . and we didn’t have to move the equipment. We’d stay on stage all week long. We would truck back up here (Brattleboro) to play Monday nights. That’s a great advantage for a band, not to have to be on the road, traveling. We had all that time to focus on the music.”
On Monday nights you could find The Trophies at summer dances on Main Street at what was then known as ‘The Armory’ or ‘The Rec’. These were very popular with Brattleboro teens and had been for years before The Trophies arrived. One of the photos accompanying this article is of the Dick Perry Band playing in the A&P parking lot beside ‘The Rec’ (Gibson-Aiken Center).
Jack Dunham describes the scene. “We would have a ‘Trophy Dance’ at the Gibson- Aiken Center. We would have 200 or 300 kids; the floor would be shaking and we’d do a Trophy Dance where our managers would judge the people dancing and we’d give away a trophy each week. That lasted all summer of 1964.”
Where did The Trophies’ most famous recording, ‘Walking the Dog’, originate? Rick Eriksen explains, “‘The Trophies were recording a demo tape to get work at different clubs…and the song that I brought in was “Walking the Dog” because I had been on tour with another band in the Midwest and I’d hear that song on jukeboxes. Nobody had heard it around here.” Turning to his band mates Dunham and Harvey, Eriksen asked, “It was news to you, right?” The version Eriksen had heard had been released in Memphis by Rufus Thomas. Thomas’ version has a very different feel and sound than the Trophies’ version. Both songs were successful.
Growing popularity led to a recording contract with Kapp Records. This led to a recording session in Boston. Jack Dunham explains, “We were at Sitzmark at Mount Snow playing weekends. We got up Saturday morning after playing Friday night and drove to Boston to the sound studios. And we just sat down and played 13 songs, singing and everything . . . we just laid it down. I was out in the middle of the room. Richard was over hammering the organ … some of the songs. We kinda just laid down the 13 songs. We went into the studio and just played the songs we had played the night before at the job. It was like playing a set, live. That’s how we got so many songs recorded in such a short period of time, and then, like Richard said, we picked those 2, then Wayne went back . . . actually, I think Richard sang ‘Walking the Dog’ and . . . Is that right?”
Eriksen replied, “Yes, I did the original demo.”
Dunham continues, “Then we went back and Wayne did a double track and got the English sound. It was just recording it, and then recording over top of it. In 1964 we recorded our first record, ‘Walking the Dog’ which was probably the most popular. That summer we were playing 5 nights a week at Terra Mar Yacht Club in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Tuesday through Saturday. Then we’d drive home on Sunday and play on Monday night, ‘cause that’s the only night we had open.”
The Trophies released, “Baby Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and “Everywhere I Go.” Their last song with Kapp was “Leave My Girl Alone.” ‘Baby Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ made the billboard top 10. The DJs were going to play it, “but they never did because, as Richard Eriksen explains, “We had bad connections, I guess, in the business.”
In the beginning, how did the band members find one another to put this prolific group in motion? Wayne and Rick were in a band called the ‘M Tones’ that included Orchard Street’s Ralph Kotkov. That band broke up when everyone went back to college. A few months later, not long after the semester started, the ‘M Tones’ reformed with a new name, ‘The Trophies’. They went to New York and recorded a song that Wayne created titled ‘Well, I Been Thinkin’. Kotkov left the band, resigning right after the Trophies recorded in “late October or early November of 1963.” Eriksen says, “I can’t recall exactly when it was, but Tom, our lead guitar player knew Richard, because Tom Howes was in my first band when I was 17 years old and so, we were in another band before The Trophies, so he knew me, and he recommended me, I guess.”
Wayne Harvey remembers, “The first time we met Richard, we were playing at Mt Snow. That winter we were at Sitzmark (near Mount Snow, Vermont) and I used to pick up Paul Olbum in Boston. I was in Providence and he lived in Boston and that’s where I met Richard. He was out there walking up Newberry Street. Anyway, so Richard joined the band just a month after it was created.”
The Trophies stayed together for almost four years and then went their separate ways. The Trophies last gig was at Bryant College in Providence, Rhode Island in 1967. The band had started in September of 1963. Wayne Harvey says, “I mean, we had a lot of great jobs. We played at Palisades Park, New Jersey with Freddie Boom Boom Cannon. We opened for Dionne Warwick in Palisades Park. And she did the lip sync or something.”
Tom Howes, lead guitarist for The Trophies, passed away in 2006. At that time he was a college professor at Middlebury College – in the music department. Bass player Paul Olbum had left the group in 1966. Olbum played bass on all The Trophies’ records. After that, they went to a 4-piece lineup. Says Jack Dunham, “We changed what we were doing. We went from playing standard Beach Boys material to playing the Lovin’ Spoonful. I remember when we worked on our harmonies.”
Wayne Harvey adds, “When rehearsing Beach Boys we went out on your (Jack Dunham’s) boat at midnight, on Lake Spofford, and we would do ‘Surfer Girl’ right out on Spofford Lake. It was a lot of fun. Sound would carry. It was pretty cool, no instruments, until 3:00 in the morning whether people liked it or not.”
Richard Eriksen credits the ‘Brattleboro scene’ with fostering the atmosphere that led to The Trophies and other area bands’ success.
“Brattleboro…was a wonderful place for musicians to play…imagine, back in the 60’s, what I call these honky tonks all over downtown and there were some nicer places up on Putney Road and that’s why people like me, in Greenfield, would come up here to find work because there was an opportunity to get your foot in the door. We were just kids. I was just 17 years old. But yet, we could find a job playing here and learn our craft. So I’ve been eternally grateful for Brattleboro. And even now I’m playing in Brattleboro, in nursing homes and stuff. So Brattleboro has been my musical home.”
Jack Dunham and Richard Eriksen reunited and formed the Solid Gold Cadillacs with other local musicians. This oldies band performed steadily into the mid 1990’s.
The Solid Gold Cadillacs would eventually break up and Jack and Richard would later come together to play as a duo. They continue to occasionally perform together today and Jack works alone doing shows during the winter months in Florida.
Editor’s note – a ½ hour radio program featuring the The Trophies, titled ‘Tracking the Tracks’, produced by the Film, Music & History class at Brattleboro Union High School may be found here: https://archive.org/details/Trophies.TTTmp3
The program will air at 8:30 AM on Brattleboro’s WTSA-FM 96.7 on Saturday July 13. If you are outside the listening area you can live stream here: https://wtsaradio.com/player/?playerID=1931
Brattleboro Historical Society article by Bill Holiday- 802-258-4957
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