Happy Traum Biography

Happy 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. Happy Traum has performed with a number of bands and as a soloist. 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. Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Peter LaFarge, Phil Ochs, and The Freedom Singers.

He has written musical instruction booklets including "Fingerpicking Styles for Guitar" 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.