Elizabeth Cotten was born around 1893 outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At a young age, she would borrow her brother's banjo, teaching herself how to play. Forced by financial circumstances to drop out of school in the third grade, she cleaned houses for 75 cents a month, eventually getting a 25-cent raise, to save up for a $3.75 Sears Roebuck Harmony Stella guitar. Elizabeth, being left-handed, played the right-handed guitar, upside down and backwards. Her signature alternating bass style, now known as "Cotten Picking," involved playing bass notes with her index finger and melody notes with her thumb.
Around age 12, she wrote her most famous song, "Freight Train." The song
became popular during the revival of American folk music and British
skiffle in the late 50s and early 60s. It was written about her hometown
in North Carolina and dealt with many adult themes, including death and
depression.
Elizabeth married Frank Cotten when she was 15 (not a particularly early
age in that era) and had one child, Lily. As Elizabeth became immersed in
family life, she spent more time at church, where she was counseled to
give up her "worldly" guitar music.
It wasn't until many years later
that Elizabeth, due largely to a fortunate chance encounter, was able to
build her immense talent into a professional music career. While working
at a department store in Washington, D.C., Elizabeth found and returned a
very young and lost Peggy Seeger to her mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger. A
month later, Elizabeth began work in the household of the famous
folk-singing Seeger family, who gave her the nickname, "Libba".
The Seeger home was an amazing place for Elizabeth to have landed. Ruth Crawford Seeger was a noted composer and
music teacher, while her husband, Charles, pioneered the field of
ethnomusicology. A few years passed before Peggy discovered Elizabeth
playing the family's gut-stringed guitar. Elizabeth apologized for playing
the instrument without asking, but Peggy was astonished by what she
heard. Eventually, the Seegers came to know Elizabeth's instrumental
virtuosity and the wealth of her repertoire.
Elizabeth would sing
"Freight Train" to young Peggy Seeger (left), Pete's half sister. When Peggy
Seeger moved to London, she played the tune in local coffee houses,
where other artists picked up on its catchy lyrics. The song spread
around and eventually was falsely copyrighted by British songwriters
Paul James and Fred Williams. One Sunday night, Elizabeth and Seegers watched "The Ed Sullivan and they saw folk singer Nancy Whiskey perform "Freight Train" with
British Chas McDevitt's skiffle group, and said, "That's my song!"With help from the Seeger family, Elizabeth sued for copyright infringement and
eventually settled out of court in 1957, but, according to her
great-grandson, she only received a fraction of the royalties made off
the song.
1958, at the age of sixty-two, Elizabeth had recorded her first album, 'Elizabeth Cotten: Negro Folk Songs and Tunes', and in 1989 was reissued as 'Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs'. The album was meticulously recorded by Mike Seeger, this
was one of the few authentic folk-music albums available by the early
1960s, and certainly one of the most influential. In addition to the now
well-recorded tune "Freight Train" penned by Elizabeth when she
was only eleven or twelve, the album provided accessible examples of some open tunings used in American folk guitar. She played two
distinct styles on the banjo and four on the guitar, including her
single-string melody picking "Freight Train" style, an adaptation of Southeastern country ragtime picking.
Elizabeth's later recordings, 'Shake Sugaree' from 1967 and 'When I'm and Gone' from 1979, continued to win critical acclaim. In 1984, her live album 'Elizabeth Cotten Live!', won her a Grammy Award
for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording, at the age of 90.
Elizabeth Cotten continued to tour and perform right up to the end of
her life. Her last concert was one that folk legend Odetta put together
for her, here in New York City.
Elizabeth Cotten passed away in 1987, at the age of 94, leaving a permanent mark on the world of folk and blues music.
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| Elizabeth's mural in in Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
Elizabeth legacy lives on not only in her own recordings, but also
in the many artists who continue to play her work. The Grateful Dead
produced several renditions of "Oh, Babe, It Ain't No Lie" and "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad". Bob Dylan covered the ever-popular "Shake Sugaree," and "Freight Train.
In 2022, she was inducted into
the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Today's freeloads are:
For the freeload, tell us who's your favorite Blues/Folk fingerpicker is.
