As a guitarist, banjo player, singer and songwriter, Artie Traum was a mainstay of the American folk music scene for more than 40 years.

He was a highly versatile and sophisticated musician whose adventurous spirit also led him to experiment with acoustic jazz. His staunch commitment to the cause of roots music and vernacular American folk, blues and country styles was indefatigable and earned him high respect from his fellow musicians.

Among those he worked with over the years were Bob Dylan, John Sebastian, the Band, Richie Havens and Pete Seeger. He also recorded prolifically as a solo artist and as a successful duo with his older brother, Happy Traum.

Artie was born in New York in 1943 and growing up in the Bronx. Happy, who was five years older than Artie, was first to discover the burgeoning folk scene of the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, New York’s bohemian enclave. There he played in the New World Singers and befriended the young Dylan, newly arrived in the city. His younger brother soon joined him on the Village folk scene, playing for tips in Washington Square Park before becoming the banjo player in the True Endeavor Jug Band, with whom he made his recording debut. A brief brush with psychedelic pop followed when he joined another band, the Bear, which released the 1968 album, Greetings, Children of Paradise and which included the theme song of the film Greetings, in which Robert De Niro had his first starring role.

Artie Traum soon returned to acoustic folk music, however, leaving the group to form a duo with his brother, who had become the editor of the folk magazine Sing Out! and remained part of Dylan’s circle. That connection led to the Traums being signed to the management company run by Albert Grossman, who also managed Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary.

One of their first performances as a duo came at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, but Grossman also put them on tour supporting another of his acts, the Band, which introduced their acoustic music to a rock audience.

Grossman’s clout also earned the duo a recording deal with Capitol Records, which released the albums Happy & Artie Traum (1970) and Double Back (1971). The latter was recorded at Grossman’s Bearsville studio in the bucolic surroundings of Woodstock, where Traum set up home and remained a resident for the rest of his life.

In 1971 Happy Traum recorded a number of songs with Dylan, subsequently released on the latter’s album, Greatest Hits Volume 2. Although Artie was not part of those sessions, in that same year he and his brother were members of the band which backed Dylan and the poet Allen Ginsberg on a projected but never-released joint album. Ginsberg later wrote the sleeve notes for the Traums’ third album, Hard Times in the Country, released by Rounder in 1975.

During the 1970s both Traums were a driving force in the Woodstock Mountains Revue, which also included the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian, and recorded five albums for Rounder.

In the mid-1980s, Traum recorded an album with Pat Alger and released the solo set Cayenne before teaming up again with his brother for another album, The Test of Time (1994). That same year he also recorded an acoustic jazz album, Letters from Joubee, which took him into new territory. It was followed in 1999 by Meetings with Remarkable Friends, another instrumental set which featured collaborative tracks with Bela Fleck, Sebastian and the Band.

Another jazz-styled album, The Last Romantic, followed in 2001, before Traum returned to his troubadour style again on South of Lafayette (2002). His most recent release was Big Trout Radio, an acoustic album of songs about fishing recorded with the folksingers Chris Shaw and Tom Akstens.

Traum wrote several guitar instruction manuals and a number of similar DVDs which were published by his brother’s company, Homespun Tapes.

He last performed with his brother in April 2008. He died of a rare ocular melanoma that spread to his liver.

Artie Traum, folk musician, was born on April 13, 1943. He died on July 20, 2008, aged 65