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Happy Traum, Greenwich Village Folksinger and Bob Dylan Collaborator, Dead at 86

Happy Traum, the Greenwich Village folk singer who famously collaborated with Bob Dylan, has died at 86.

Long before Dylan arrived in New York City in January 1961, Traum was enmeshed in the Village scene in the Fifties and Sixties, studying guitar with blues legend Brownie McGhee and participating in the fabled Sunday afternoon jam sessions at Washington Square Park, where he met one of his heroes, the late Dave Van Ronk. As a member of the New World Singers, an interracial folk group that also included Gil Turner and Delores Dixon, Traum became the first to cover Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for the Folkways album Broadside Ballads Vol. “I knew they were rehearsing for various things, and Robbie [Robertson] had invited my brother and I to his house to hear the rough cuts of the Big Pink stuff,” Traum told Rolling Stone.

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