Robert Rosen

 

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.

 

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Every so often I get the urge to write a letter to an editor. It happened the other week when I read an article in The Guardian about Bob Dylan and the Volkswagen van that appeared on the cover of one of his early albums, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The reporter, Billy Heller, had tracked down the owner of the van, a Greenwich Village butcher whose shop, Florence Prime Meat Market, was (and still is) on Jones Street, where the album cover was shot.

 

Heller's opening sentence was an outdated cliché that described the Village as a magnet for creative types. I'll let the letter (text below) speak for itself.

 

Your article (Freewheelin' to fame – the untold story of Bob Dylan's iconic VW van, 24 March) begins: "New York City's Greenwich Village has always been a magnet for outsiders, artists and poets." That sentence cries out for an update. Greenwich Village used to be a magnet for such people.

 

I'm a writer, my wife is a singer-songwriter, and we've lived in the area for well over 30 years. Yes, some of us have been fortunate enough to weather the changes that have made this neighbourhood (as well as much of Manhattan) unaffordable to most. But I can now report that the Village has become a magnet for bankers, brokers and trust-fund tragedies.

 

If a young Bob Dylan were coming to New York today, he'd be lucky to find an affordable place in the Bronx or Staten Island.
Robert Rosen
New York City, US

 

I could have added three more categories of newly arrived Greenwich Village denizens: hedge-fund managers, corporate lawyers, and weathy divorcees. Creative types, of course, still do move here on occasion, usually after they've made their first couple of million.

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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 Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.