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Happy Traum Biography

happy-traum
  • Born: May 9, 1938 in New York, NY
  • Years Active: 1960s-1980s
  • Member of: Woodstock Mountain Revue
  • Genre: Country

Happy Traum is a singer/songwriter based in Woodstock, New York who served as editor of Sing Out! magazine for three years and has run Homespun Tapes -- a company that sells instructional tapes for aspiring musicians narrated by well-known folk and rock artists -- for over 40. Born in the Bronx, Traum attended the High School of Music and Art, where he took up music and was drawn into the folk music boom of the late '50s in the New York area. He was a member of the New World Singers and formed a folk-rock band in the mid-'60s called the Children of Paradise with his brother Artie, Eric Kaz, and others. He moved to Woodstock in 1967. Traum conducted one of the first interviews Bob Dylan granted after his 1966 motorcycle accident and, in October 1971, recorded several tracks with Dylan that appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. He has made solo albums, records with his brother, and recordings with the Woodstock Mountain Revue. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi

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