His parallel careers, as an author, a teacher, and a Broadway and film and television actor, mark Guy Davis as a Renaissance man, yet the blues remain his first and greatest love. Growing up in a family of artists (his parents were Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis), he fell under the spell of Blind Willie McTell and Fats Waller at an early age. Guy’s one-man play, "The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed with the Blues," premiered off-Broadway in the ‘90s and has since been released as a double CD. He went on to star off-Broadway as the legendary Robert Johnson in "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil," winning the Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive award. More recently he joined the Broadway production of "Finian’s Rainbow," playing the part originally done in 1947 by Sonny Terry, an experience that helped inspire the acclaimed Terry/McGhee album, "Sonny Brownie’s Last Train." In his new album, "Be Ready When I Call You," it’s his songwriting that really comes forward. For the first time in over a dozen-album career he wrote nearly everything on the disc, Howlin’ Wolf’s classic Spoonful being the sole exception. “I call it Americana, but I slip a little world music in there too,” he says. “When you’re trying to create beautiful music, you don’t think too much about categories. You know, I came up in the Pete Seeger tradition – folk songs, topical songs, the Woody Guthrie kind of tunes. And then the delightful entertaining kind of tunes, songs like Kisses Sweeter Than Wine. I have all that in me and I tried to let it flow a little bit in this opus.” Tying all his work together is his love of a good story, and a willingness to speak out when there’s a point to be made. “That’s what I consider myself, a musical storyteller. I tend to create music but even if I didn’t, I would use somebody else’s music — and if I didn’t have that, I would speak poems or prose. I think that all these things increase me as a performer…. the songs, the plays, the descriptions, everything I do with words. They’re all part of each other.” Happy Traum was smitten by American folk music and began playing guitar and 5-string banjo as a teenager. He was an active participant of the legendary Washington Square/Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1950s and ‘60s, and studied guitar with the famed blues master, Brownie McGhee. A first-rate fingerstyle guitarist and singer, he has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan, both as a soloist and as a member of various groups. His avid interest in traditional and contemporary folk music has brought him recognition as a performer, writer, editor, session musician, teacher, and recording artist. He has been recording music since 1963, both with his brother, the late Artie Traum, and as a solo performer. In July, 2022, Happy released "There’s a Bright Side Somewhere," a collection of songs and instrumentals backed by nearly twenty of his very talented musical comrades from the Woodstock area and beyond. “As he shows yet again on a new album titled There’s a Bright Side Somewhere, his exceptional fingerpicking guitar is unrivaled, and he brings dazzling life to traditional and contemporary folk songs.” – Henry Carrigan, Folk Alley Now in his 84th year, Happy continues to perform, record, conduct guitar workshops and classes, and produce new lessons for Homespun Tapes. One of Woodstock’s most revered local musicians, he can often be heard playing for large fundraisers or other community causes, trying to pay back the half-century of friendships and good will that came to him and his family in that creative, progressive community. guydavis.com www.happytraum.com Presented by the nonprofit San Diego Folk Heritage, www.sdfolkheritage.org
