Last week we lost Happy Traum, one of the shining lights of acoustic music for over half a century.

It’s hard to fully grasp, in our online world where everything is right there whenever we need it, just what an enormous contribution Happy and the Homespun team made to helping people learn roots and acoustic music.

I was lucky enough to get to chat to Happy a couple of times for the podcast, and he spoke about how strongly he felt that their role was to document, as well as teach. Watching the videos they put out with Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Norman Blake and Bill Monroe (and many more) it’s hard to think of a bigger contribution to documenting an era of music!

To celebrate Happy's extraordinary influence, which will continue for many years through Homespun's legacy, I'm re-posting the chat I had with him for the podcast back in June of 2022. Countless people learned to play an instrument thanks to the books, tapes, videos, CDs, DVDs and downloads Homespun put out, with some of the leading names in roots music, including Tony Rice, Norman Blake, Bill Monroe, John Hartford, Sam Bush and many, many more.

Happy shares the story of how Homespun was born, around a kitchen table, as well as memories of working with some of those iconic musicians, many of whom became friends along the way.

Happy will be dearly missed by those who knew him, as well as by people like me, who didn't, but whose lives were enriched by his work.

Thank you Happy!

Matt

Visit Homespun's website to check out their extraordinary catalogue  

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Thanks to Bryan Sutton for his wonderful theme tune to Bluegrass Jam Along (and to Justin Moses for playing the fiddle!)

Bluegrass Jam Along is proud to be sponsored by Collings Guitars and Mandolins

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