A National Treasure

Remembering Happy Traum (1938–2024), plus a transcription of his arrangement of "There’s a Bright Side Somewhere”

Happy Traum with his signature Santa Cruz Guitar Company Model HT/13 in Woodstock, New York, 2021. Photo by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

I got my first guitar in 1988, and like many musicians who took up the instrument before so much instructional content was easily available online, I learned the fundamentals of American roots music through the VHS videos and books offered by Happy Traum through his trailblazing company, Homespun Music Instruction. Little did I know that many years later I would be working with Traum by editing his lessons for Acoustic Guitar magazine—an experience that was as pleasurable as it was instructive.  

I had been hoping to interview Traum for this Substack newsletter when I received an email from my colleague Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers with the subject line “Happy Traum.” Immediately, I got a sinking feeling and knew what this meant. At 86, Traum was not young, but his death did come as a surprise, as he had been a vibrant presence on the acoustic music scene well into his 80s.

In this remembrance, David Lusterman—the owner of Stringletter Media, which publishes Acoustic Guitar and other magazines—likens Traum to members of the Lomax family in the way that he documented the techniques and style of the most influential blues and folk musicians. Traum learned firsthand from guitarists like Brownie McGhee, and then demystified the music through his Homespun courses. It’s not a stretch to say that all contemporary roots guitarists are some way indebted to Traum for his insights and teachings.

Happy Traum with his brother, Artie Traum, at the 1968 Newport Folk Festival

At the same time, Traum enjoyed a long and storied career as a performing artist, having cut his teeth in New York in the Washington Square/Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1950s and ’60s. On his 1963 recorded debut, Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 (Folkway Records), he played alongside Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and other folk musicians, and he went on to work extensively with Dylan. He had a longstanding and acclaimed folk duo with his brother, Artie Traum, playing together from the late 1960s until Artie’s premature death, in 2008. Traum was a beloved fixture not just nationally and internationally but in Woodstock, New York, his home of many years, where he befriended and collaborated with musicians like Larry Campbell, Cindy Cashdollar, and John Sebastian.

Traum’s solo albums, beginning with Relax Your Mind (1975) and ending with There’s a Bright Side Somewhere (2022), are a treasure of roots music and fingerstyle guitar approaches, filled with delightful inventiveness within traditional forms and structures. Upon hearing the latter for the first time, Lusterman recalls, “‘Damn,’ I remember thinking, ‘he’s 84 years old and he sounds better than ever!’” The album serves as a fitting coda to long musical life well lived. May Happy Traum’s memory be a blessing.

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