Happy Traum, a celebrated folk singer, guitarist and banjo player who was a mainstay of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene of the early 1960s, recorded with Bob Dylan and had an influential career as a music instructor, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 86.
His wife, Jane Traum, said he died of pancreatic cancer in a physical rehabilitation facility after undergoing surgery for the disease. He lived in Woodstock, N.Y.
Known for his easy vocal approach and his prowess as a finger-style guitarist and five-string banjo player, the Bronx-bred Mr. Traum was an enduring presence in the folk world for more than six decades.
“Revered by most in the musical know, he is easily one of the most significant acoustic-roots musicians and guitar pickers of his — and many other — generations,” Blues magazine observed in the introduction to a 2016 interview with Mr. Traum.
Will Hermes of Rolling Stone described him as a “folk revivalist straight out of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’” a reference to the Coen brothers’ 2013 folk-world odyssey, in a four-star review of Mr. Traum’s album “Just for the Love of It.” It was the seventh of eight albums he released as a leader, starting with “Relax Your Mind” in 1975.
In the late 1960s, Mr. Traum performed in a highly regarded duo with his younger brother, Artie Traum. The brothers performed at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1969, toured the world and released five albums, starting with “Happy and Artie Traum” in 1970. Artie Traum died of liver cancer in 2008.
A sought-after sideman, Mr. Traum recorded and performed with luminaries like Mr. Dylan, Pete Seeger, Levon Helm of the Band and the reggae star Peter Tosh.
He earned a place in folk history at a storied 1963 recording session that featured his band, along with Mr. Dylan, Mr. Seeger, Phil Ochs and others; it resulted in the seminal folk album “Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1.” Among the tracks on that album was Mr. Traum’s duet with Mr. Dylan, performing under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, on Mr. Dylan’s antiwar song “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.”
In October 1971, Mr. Dylan, who by then was living near the Traums in Woodstock, called and asked Mr. Traum to bring a guitar, banjo and bass to the Columbia Records studio on West 54th Street in Manhattan the next day.
“Never mind that I didn’t own a bass,” Mr. Traum recalled on his official website, “and had never played one in public before. I borrowed one — fast.”
With Mr. Traum plucking away and lending lilting harmonies, the two recorded a number of tracks, two of which Mr. Dylan would include on his forthcoming compilation, “Greatest Hits, Volume II.”
One of them was a version of “I Shall Be Released” — perkier than the one Mr. Dylan had originally recorded with the Band in 1967 during the famous “Basement Tapes” sessions. (The Band memorably recorded the song themselves on their landmark 1968 album, “Music From Big Pink.”)
Looking back on that session years later, Mr. Traum said, “There’s a relaxed intimacy there that I like to think is partly due to our friendship, and to the many occasions in which we sat around the house playing the old songs.”
Harry Peter Traum was born on May 9, 1938, in the Bronx, the eldest of two sons of Martin Traum, a dentist, and Ruth (Hyams) Traum, a visual artist. He carried the nickname Happy since infancy.
He grew up in the West Bronx and took an interest in folk music while studying art at the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). He became friends there with Peter Yarrow, later of Peter, Paul and Mary, and Eric Weissberg, who would gain fame with “Dueling Banjos.”
After graduating in 1956, he enrolled in New York University. By then he was already honing his musical chops under the tutelage of the blues musician Brownie McGhee. He received a bachelor’s degree in English in 1960 and became a regular at local folk clubs and at the storied Sunday folk jams in Washington Square Park.
He also joined the folk group the New World Singers, who counted Mr. Dylan, still a rising young folky from Minnesota, as a friend and a fan. “He liked our group a lot,” Mr. Traum said in an interview last year with The Dylan Review. “He used to follow us to different gigs around the city.”
During the 1963 Broadside sessions, the New World Singers cut the first recording of the Dylan classic “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which Mr. Dylan had given the band to perform in local venues like Folk City, on West Fourth Street.
“We knew it was a special song, but we didn’t know how special,” Mr. Traum said. “We didn’t know, historically, that we’d still be talking about it 60 years later.”
Mr. Dylan also provided Mr. Traum and the New World Singers with another of his future classics, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” which they released as a single — the first recorded version of the song, Mr. Traum later said. They included it on their debut album, released by Atlantic Records in 1963.
“And then, of course, ‘Freewheelin’’ came out, and everybody and his brother and sister recorded that song,” Mr. Traum said, referring to the album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” released the same year. “There’s probably a thousand recordings of that song. I don’t think it says in any history books, but ours was definitely the first time it was recorded.”
In addition to his wife, Mr. Traum is survived by his daughters, Merry and April Traum; his son, Adam; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Traum left his mark not just as a musician but also as a music teacher. In 1967, he and his wife founded Homespun Music Instruction, which has produced instructional books and videos for a variety of instruments featuring tips from notables like Mr. Helm, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, Paul Butterfield and John Sebastian.
To Mr. Traum, however, the real lessons of folk music went deeper, as he learned in high school when he first saw Mr. Seeger perform.
“The whole idea of hearing somebody on a stage by himself, with an instrument, was the antithesis of the pop music I was listening to on the radio, where you couldn’t do that yourself,” Mr. Traum said in a 2021 interview with Acoustic Guitar magazine.
“Here was a guy who told us, pretty much, ‘You could do this, too,’” he added. “‘You just stand here and play some chords and sing songs.’ And Pete was singing about peace and freedom and civil rights — that was something I felt but didn’t know you could express.”
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