Happy Traum

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Happy Traum (born Harry Peter Traum) is an American folk musician who started playing music in the Fifties. Happy began playing guitar and 5-string banjo as a teenager. He is a former guitar student of the legendary folk and blues musician Brownie McGhee, for whom he later edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook. His group, the New World Singers, was the first to perform and record some of Bob Dylan's earliest songs.

Happy Traum has performed as a soloist and with a number of bands, including The New World Singers. His performances have taken him throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan.

Happy Traum's first recording was an album called "Broadside, Vol.1" recorded by Folkways Records. Also on the album were Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan(Performing as Blind Boy Grunt), Peter LaFarge, Phil Ochs, and The Freedom Singers. Happy was a neighbor of Bob Dylan, and joined him in the studio in 1971 to play on three songs for his “Greatest Hits, Vol.2” release: Down in the Flood, You Ain't Goin' Nowhere and I Shall Be Released.

He has written musical instruction booklets including "Fingerpicking Styles for Guitar" (published in 1966) and edited "Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee," published in New York in 1971 by Oak Publications, a division of Embassy Music Corporation, and in the UK by Music Sales Limited, London.