Happy Traum, a prolific musician influential in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene and longtime Woodstock resident, has died. Rolling Stone reported that the cause was cancer. Traum was 86.
Videos by Suggest
Traum and his brother, Artie, were highly esteemed musicians in the folk music scene. The duo performed at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1969, toured internationally, and released five albums. Sadly, Artie Traum passed away from liver cancer in 2008.
Born in the Bronx in 1938, Traum’s journey into folk music began at the High School of Music & Art. There, he discovered traditional American music and fell in love with the works of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. This early exposure ignited a lifelong passion, shaping his future and leaving a lasting influence on countless musicians for generations to come.
Traum’s musical education was a DIY project. He self-taught himself guitar and 5-string banjo. He fine-tuned his skills while moonlighting as a folk music counselor at a forward-thinking teen camp in the Catskills. To fund his NYU studies, he started giving guitar lessons—a side gig that strummed its way into a major career highlight.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Traum played an integral role in the lively folk scene of Washington Square and Greenwich Village. He contributed to the cultural and political movements of the time. He rubbed elbows with folk legends such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Peter LaFarge.
Happy Traum Records Alongside Bob Dylan and Other Folk Heroes
In 1963, he participated in a landmark recording session alongside Dylan, Seeger, Phil Ochs, and other folk luminaries, culminating in the creation of the seminal album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1.
One notable track on this album features Traum’s duet with Dylan, who performed under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, on Dylan’s poignant antiwar song “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.”
He later joined the folk group the New World Singers. Of course, they were the first to record the Dylan classic “Blowin’ in the Wind.” This iconic song was given to the band by the songwriter himself to perform at local venues.
Dylan also gifted Traum and the New World Singers with another of his future classics, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” They released it as a single, marking the first recorded version of the song. This track was featured on their debut album, which Atlantic Records released in 1963.
Meanwhile, Traum also founded Homespun Music Instruction, a platform that has produced instructional books and videos featuring insights from notable musicians such as Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, Paul Butterfield, and John Sebastian.
Alongside his wife, Traum is survived by his daughters Merry and April Traum, his son Adam, and four grandchildren.