Happy Traum, Collaborator of Greenwich Village Folkie and Bob Dylan, Dead at 86

Happy Traum, a stalwart of the Greenwich Village and Woodstock folk scenes and longtime friend and collaborator of Bob Dylan, died Wednesday at age 86.

Hudson Valley Magazine Schedule confirmed the musician's death, although the cause of death was not immediately known.

Born in the Bronx on May 9, 1938, Traum was officially named Harry, but was nicknamed “Happy” by his family. Long before Dylan arrived in New York in January 1961, Traum had been involved with the Village scene in the '50s and '60s, studying guitar with blues legend Brownie McGhee and participating in the legendary Sunday afternoon jam sessions at Washington Square Park, where he met a by his heroes, the late Dave Van Ronk. Traum also took part in a protest in 1961 against a ban on playing folk music in the park and appeared briefly in Sundaydirector Daniel Drasin's documentary that day.

“In those days, you didn't think about making a living from folk music,” he said in an interview about the upcoming book. Talkin' Greenwich Village. “There were some people, like Harry Belafonte and Theodore Bickel, who became famous. But most of the time you never thought it was a profession. Then in the later part of the 50s, you started seeing coffee shops and concert venues opening up and hey, you could make $10!”

Traum also met Dylan, then a newcomer to the scene. “I knew him when he first came to New York and the first couple of years when he was banging around town and starting to write the songs,” Traum said. RS in 2014. As a member of the New World Singers, an interracial folk group that also included Gil Turner and Delores Dixon, Traum became the first to cover Dylan's “Blowin' in the Wind,” for the Folkways album Broadside Ballads Vol. 1 (which also featured two tracks by Blind Boy Grunt, aka Dylan). Traum and Dylan also duetted on Dylan's “Let Me Die in My Footsteps”, which was eventually released on album/smithsonian” target=”_blank”>Smithsonian Folkways Recordings comp in 2000.

After the New World Singers broke up, Traum, along with his brother and fellow musician Artie, briefly formed a rock band, Children of Paradise. (Art died of liver cancer in 2008.) More comfortable with acoustic music, Traum, his wife Jane, and their three children moved in 1967 to Woodstock, New York, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

It was here that Traum saw the birth of what became Dylan and the Band Basement movies. “I knew they were rehearsing things, and Robbie [Robertson] he had invited my brother and I over to his house to listen to Big Pink's hard cuts,” Traum said. Rolling rock. “I remember him putting these big reel-to-reel tapes on a big tape recorder and we heard this stuff for the first time there. Which was also incredible. We didn't even know what we were listening to. It was amazingly original and shocking. They didn't tell them Basement movies then. It was just, “Here's what we're working on.”

As a duo, the Traum brothers recorded several albums, appeared at the Newport Folk festival in 1968 and 1969, and were managed by Albert Grossman, who famously worked with Dylan and Janis Joplin. (A young Patti Smith was among their ushers.)

Traum has frequently given interviews about his friendship with Dylan, including one in 2014 Rolling rock cover that focused on the legendary Basement movies. In his WebsiteTraum reflected on the day Dylan randomly invited him to work in 1971 Greatest Hits Vol. IIwhen he wanted to re-record something Basement movies material. They finished producing new versions of “You Ain't Goin' Nowhere”, “Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood)” and “I Shall Be Released”.

“He called out and said, 'Come down and bring a bass, banjo and guitar,'” Traum recalled. “It was just the two of us and an engineer. They were basically songs from Basement movies and he wanted to put his stamp on them. Then Bob was trying hard to remain anonymous.” Traum later wrote of his excitement for “Only a Hobo,” a cut from that session, which was included on Vol. 10 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, 2013 Another Self Portrait (1969–1971).

Apart from acting, Traum, whose warm demeanor endeared him to everyone in this world, was also a contributing writer to Rolling rock, Acoustic guitar, and Guitaristas well as editor at Sing out! The Folksong Magazine. His last solo album was in 2015 Only for his love. In a four star review, Rolling rock wrote that the record is “a beautiful, modestly virtuoso celebration of the folk tradition and a community that still cultivates it.”

But perhaps his most lasting contribution to his world was the creation, in 1967, of the Homespun Tapes, a series of instructional tapes for instrumentalists and singers that included contributions from Donald Fagan, Dr. John, Richard Thompson, Jorma Kaukonen, Maria Muldaur. , Jack Casady and many others.

In the May 17, 1969 issue of Rolling rock, Traum wrote an essay entitled “The Swan Song of Folk Music.” “Folk music should be considered a thing of the past,” Traum wrote. “But I keep thinking of a line from an early Dylan song: 'She looks like she's a-dyin'/And she was hardly born.'