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Songwriter in the Greenwich scene

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From Times Staff and Wire Reports

Artie Traum, 65, a veteran songwriter and guitarist who came out of the seminal Greenwich Village folk music scene of the ‘60s, died Sunday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., of cancer that had spread to his liver, said manager Jeff Heiman.

Born in 1943 and raised in the Bronx, Traum played in Greenwich Village with his brother, Happy Traum.

The brothers would play together on and off for decades.

Traum also recorded a series of solo albums and produced or recorded with some of the biggest names in folk, rock and jazz, from Bela Fleck to Pete Seeger, according to his website.

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Traum began recording jazz albums in the ‘90s.

Happy Traum said his brother’s musical sensibility, though grounded in the folk tradition, encompassed styles from jug band to contemporary jazz.

“He had a big scope to his music. It wasn’t one thing. He had a bit of chameleon in him,” Happy Traum said Monday.

Traum recorded dozens of albums in his long career and played shows around the world.

He performed publicly until May, when melanoma in his eye spread, Happy Traum said.

The Traum brothers were managed by Bob Dylan’s late manger, Albert Grossman. Like Dylan and Grossman, the Traums moved to Woodstock. The brothers stayed and became stalwarts of the Hudson Valley arts colony’s music scene.

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