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.