Robert Rosen

The story I posted last week, in memory of Happy Traum (May 9, 1938–July 17, 2024), is about a headline I wrote for a college newspaper that ended up on the cover of Happy and Artie Traum's Hard Times in the Country, released by Rounder Records in 1975. I'd never thought about how, exactly, "Traums At It Again" found its way onto the cover. It just was. But one of the many responses the post garnered on social media was from the man who designed the cover "a lifetime ago," as he said.

 

Pat Alger is a songwriter who collaborated with the Traums and toured with The Everly Brothers. In 1980 he released an LP with Artie, From the Heart. Later moving to Nashville, he wrote hits for Garth Brooks, Hal Ketchum, and Trisha Yearwood. Dolly Parton, Lyle Lovett, and the trio Peter, Paul and Mary are among the musicians who've recorded Alger's songs.

 

Alger explained in his comment how the cover for Hard Times in the Country came to be: "I designed this cover for Happy and Artie because I had designed quite a few of the early Rounder covers. I lived in Woodstock at the time and we were great friends—I sang on the chorus of 'Mississippi John' and 'I Bid You Goodnight.' This was a bulletin board at Happy and [his wife] Jane's house—essentially a collage of great photos and meaningful items to them which Guy Cross photographed and I cropped this way for the cover."

 

When I thanked him for working in my headline, he said, "It was a lucky shot—it was on the bulletin board and I was looking for an interesting slice of it and voila you made it!"

 

Listening note: Michael Mand played a Happy Traum tribute on his OWWR internet radio show, St. James Infirmary. The podcast is available here. It's the fifth set, beginning around 2:21:30.

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In the early 1960s, folk duo Happy and Artie Traum began playing music in Washington Square Park and in the cafés and clubs of Greenwich Village. The brothers were born in the Bronx—Happy went to the High School of Music & Art and NYU, in Manhattan—and are credited with carrying the spirit of the Village folk scene to Woodstock, New York, where they later lived. Happy, a fingerpicking legend, is probably best known for two songs he recorded with Bob Dylan on Greatest Hits, Vol. II: "I Shall Be Released" and "You Ain't Going Nowhere."

 

I found out about the Traums when I was at City College in the 1970s. They were regulars at an on-campus performance space known at various times as Cafe Finley and The Monkey's Paw. You could see them play there for $1.50, which included coffee and donuts. I saw them many times. The student newspaper I edited, Observation Post, often reviewed their shows.

 

In the days before computers, to write a headline that fit in the allotted space, you had to count every letter and punctuation mark. By this calculation, most lowercase letters were 1, most uppercase letters were 1½, and most punctuation marks were ½. The layout artist measured the space with a pica ruler and told an editor the letter count. The editor read the article and wrote a headline that fit, perfectly if possible.

 

This was difficult, especially for complex stories that had to be expressed in four or five words. It was like writing a haiku, and I wrote many awkward headlines I'd prefer to forget. But the headline I wrote for a review of a Happy and Artie show, in the November 28, 1973, issue, popped into my head after reading the piece about their sixth appearance at City College in recent years:

 

Traums At It Again

 

It fit!

 

Flash forward to early 1975. I'm living in Washington Heights with my roommate, a big Happy and Artie fan from the Bronx. He acquires a review copy of their latest LP, Hard Times In The Country, from Rounder Records. I look at the cover, a collage of photos and miscellanea tacked to a bulletin board. And there's my headline, "Traums At It Again," right in the middle, near the top.

 

Artie died on July 20, 2008, at age 65. Happy died last week, July 17, at age 86.

 

I never had a chance to thank them for the thrill of seeing my headline on an album cover.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

 

 

It's been hot in New York City. And humid. How hot is it? Nothing like the 120 degrees in Las Vegas or the 130 in Death Valley. But as I stepped off the elevator the other day after taking a walk, my neighbor asked if it was raining.

 

"No, I'm sweating," I said.

 

I'm dedicating this mid-summer post to memories of cooler days. The photo, taken in Washington Square Park the morning of February 13, 2024, was one of those days.

 

It doesn't snow much in New York anymore, not like it did in the 60s and 70s when you could count on three or four good blizzards every winter to shut down the schools. But it snowed that morning, coating the park in a pristine white frosting. By evening, every snowflake had melted.

 

That's just the way it goes these days.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

Larry David on Fridays in an episode from 1980.

 

While dining last week with a group of friends I used to work with at Vanity Fair, the conversation turned to what a miserable town L.A. can be, especially when it comes to dealing with entertainment industry people. They were, it was said, passive-aggressive; they avoid any kind of confrontation; they lie; they don't return phone calls, etc., etc. One person told a joke about how an agent goes to a screenwriter's house, douses his wife and kids with gasoline, sets them on fire, and burns down the house. The screenwriter comes home and the cops tell him what happened. "You mean my agent came to my house?" he says.

 

I told my L.A. story about an unpleasant encounter with Larry David back in 1980. (Has anybody ever had a pleasant encounter with him?) That summer I'd been invited to try out as a writer for Fridays, L.A.'s short-lived version of Saturday Night Live.

 

In the Montecito Hotel, where I was staying, and at the ABC production facility, ideas for cold openings kept popping into my head. I thought they were funny and inspired. So I wrote them on a portable typewriter and handed the finished scripts directly to one of the producers. I was so sure I was going to get the job, it didn't occur to me to keep copies.

 

I waited to hear if I had the job. The producers kept me in limbo, though allowed me to sit in on meetings, rehearsals, and broadcasts. One day at a writers' meeting, Larry David, the head writer and a cast member, asked if they'd hired me.

 

"I don't know," I said. "I'm still waiting to hear."

 

He called security and had me thrown off the lot.

 

A few weeks later, the show's cold opening was security guards throwing a writer off the lot.

 

Maybe I didn't get the job because the producers wanted to see more than cold openings. And maybe the openings were too edgy for network TV. The skit I remember best was Charlie Manson—as popular in L.A. then as Trump is in New York now—doing a song-and-dance number on a conference table for the producers: I can sing!/I can dance!/I can act!/Need a chance!

 

I'd have loved that job; it would have set my career on a different path. And I'd love to have those lost Fridays scripts. But after all was said and done, I didn't have to spend half my life stuck in traffic, possibly in an encroaching wildfire, in a city where the weather never changes. And then the show was canceled.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

 

Tomorrow is July 4, and I figured I'd take a week off from harsh realities past and present and contemplate a pleasant moment of summer past. And what says summer better than a bunch of cows lazing around a verdant pasture? (Okay, lots of things, but I happen to have a photo of cows.)

 

Mary Lyn Maiscott took this shot in June 2017, just outside the hamlet of Glen, New York. We were visiting Byron Nilsson and his wife, Susan Whiteman, owners of the Jollity Farm Collective. One morning Mary Lyn and I took a walk down Route 110, past the Glen Conservancy, past the old town cemetery, past the Amish farmers working their fields. And we came upon these content-looking cows of summer. So Mary Lyn captured the bucolic moment with my phone, as she'd forgotten to bring hers.

 

On the other hand, if you want a little reality, you can listen to Mary Lyn's protest song, "Fourth of July" which, in light of the events of the past week, now needs an additional verse.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.