I got to know the Traums from SingOut magazine. I just dug out 1972 volume 21 no3. If you have that issue there is a great interview of the Traum bros...Robert 

Happy along with his brother, Artie, was a great innovator in providing instruction to folk musicians. I think many of us from that era of folk music appreciated Happy's contributions to and promotion of folk music. He will be missed by family, friends, and those of us who used some of the resources he provided.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

@dusty, Happy brought a lot of good to the world!  

That's right, Robin. I forgot about Jean's Homespun lesson.

Happy's widow Jane posted a nice statement on the Homespun homepage.  Apparently Happy died of pancreatic cancer.

--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

I have Jean Ritchie's Homespun instructional cd & book and am glad I do!  

RIP, Happy Traum.

To my knowledge he never played the dulcimer, but Happy Traum--along with his brother Artie--was an integral part of the folk music scene in the 1950s and 1960s in both Greenwich Village and Woodstock, NY.  He hung around with Pete Seeger and then Bob Dylan and Brownie McGee and David Ronk and was a member of the interracial folk group, The New World Singers.

I never heard Happy perform, but among his accomplishments was to found Homespun Tapes, where he shared instructional material for people who wanted to learn folk music.  Somewhere in my garage I have a bunch of those original cassettes, including one on fingerpicking like Mississippi John Hurt, singing harmony like Robin and Linda Williams, and two unique to Happy: one on hot acoustic licks and another on chords that taught moveable triads all over the fretboard.

Among the instructional videos Happy produced is David Schnaufer's Learning Mountain Dulcimer , still available on DVD or digital download. 

After several years of concentrating on the dulcimer, I decided to go back to playing the guitar a few years ago and now have a bookmarked page on my computer for my Homespun Music's "library" of lessons.  Some of the best are by Happy's kid Adam, who has continued the tradition of mastering folk music and passing on the lessons to others.

Less known than other folk musicians who achieved commercial notoriety for their recordings, Happy was nonetheless an important part of the folk music scene for about 70 years, even to those of us who never met him or heard him play in person.  I learned so much from him.

Here is the Rolling Stone obituary .

--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie