HOMESPUN
40th Anniversary Edition
Taught By Happy Traum.
Level 3
142-page book
This edition commemorates the 40th anniversary of two folk classics from Oak
Publications: "Fingerpicking Styles for Guitar" and "Traditional
and Contemporary Fingerpicking," presented here in one revised and updated
volume. These landmark transcriptions represent the playing of some of the greatest
country, folk and blues musicians, ranging from the mountains of Virginia, the
Piedmont of North Carolina, the coal mining country of Kentucky, and places as
distant as the Bahamas, England and Africa.
This book includes basic instruction in fingerpicking and accurate transcriptions from the playing of twenty-two artists, including Mance Lipscomb, Mississippi John Hurt, Mike Seeger, Elizabeth Cotten, Etta Baker, Joseph Spence, Merle Travis, Dave Van Ronk, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Doc Watson and more.
A note from Happy Traum:
It is astonishing to me that forty years have passed since I first walked into the offices of Oak Publications on West 46th Street with a proposal for a new kind of guitar instruction book. My idea at the time was simply to transcribe, as accurately as I could, some solos of my favorite fingerstyle players, and organize the pieces according to the method that I had developed as a guitar teacher during the previous decade or so. I knew that at that time there was nothing in print that documented the styles of these seminal players, so I set myself the painstaking task of turning heartfelt and often improvisational recordings into the black-and-white notations of music and tablature.
There must have been a need for this type of publication, because Fingerpicking
Styles for Guitar went through three printings in its first year, and it has
been selling continuously ever since.
During the past forty years, Happy Traum's avid interest in traditional and contemporary
music has brought him recognition as a performer, writer, editor, folklorist,
teacher and recording artist. He has performed extensively throughout the U.S.,
Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has appeared on recordings as a featured
artist, as a member of various ensembles, and as an accompanist. He has played
and recorded with Bob Dylan, Chris Smither, Maria Muldaur, Eric Andersen, Rory
Block, Jerry Jeff Walker, Allen Ginsberg, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel
and innumerable others. Happy is the author of more than a dozen best-selling guitar instruction books, has written numerous magazine columns and articles, and for three years was editor of Sing Out! The Folksong Magazine. He and his brother, Artie Traum, have been playing as a duo since 1968. Their first two Capitol albums, "Happy And Artie Traum" and "Double Back," are widely considered to be classics. Long-time residents of Woodstock, NY, Happy and Artie co-produced several important records for Rounder, featuring some of the area's finest folk and rock musicians. These included "Mud Acres, Music Among Friends" and "Woodstock Mountains." Happy and Artie's album "Hard Times In The Country" featured liner notes by Allen Ginsberg. In 1993, Happy and Artie released their latest duet album, "The Test Of Time," featuring traditional and contemporary songs backed up by some of Woodstock's finest musicians.
Happy's solo albums include "Relax Your Mind," "American Stranger," "Bright Morning Stars" and "Friends And Neighbors." A compilation CD, "Buckets Of Songs," has been released by Shanachie Records. In 2001, “Bright Morning Stars” was reissued in CD format in the U.S. (Lark’s Nest Music) and in Japan (Slice of Life Records).
Perhaps Happy Traum's most important and lasting musical contribution has been Homespun Tapes, which he and his wife Jane founded in 1967. This dynamic and growing mail order company has a catalog of approximately 400 different music instruction lessons on audio cassette, CD and video tape, taught by top professional performing musicians. Happy produces all of the lessons, and brings to Homespun his many years of experience as a popular and productive member of the music community.