Remembering Folk Music Icon Elizabeth Cotten

On this day in 1987, the great folk and blues musician Elizabeth Cotten passed away at the age of 94. A tremendously influential artist, Cotten‘s story is a fascinating one that didn’t see her find fame or recognition for her craft until she was in her 60s. Fortunately, she lived a long enough life to experience some of it.

Elizabeth is most widely associated with the song, “Freight Train,” written by her as a young girl. It’s often reported that she composed the tune in her “early teens,” but I’ve also seen it claimed that she was as young as 11 years old. At any rate, it became a classic covered by such artists as Taj Mahal, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. “Freight Train” is even said to have been performed by John Lennon‘s pre-Beatles outfit, The Quarrymen. Other tracks like “Oh, Babe It Ain’t No Lie,” and “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad” worked their way into the repertoires of Jerry Garcia/Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, as did the song “Shake Sugaree” co-written by Cotten‘s several grandchildren (“each one of them got a verse“).

The self-taught musician won a Grammy at the age of 90 and was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but it’s almost a miracle she was ever discovered at all. The left-handed guitarist and banjo player developed her “Cotten picking” style by playing her instruments upside down without bothering to restring them. She left school at 13 to assist her mother in housekeeping and was married to a man named Frank Cotten at 17. She was soon convinced to devote herself to the church and to cease playing her ragtime music and “worldly” songs. This resulted in her abandoning the guitar for a good 25 years until a chance meeting at her department store job brought her in contact with the renowned Seeger family.

At the bottom of this article is a video clip from the short-lived TV program, Rainbow Quest (1965-66), hosted by folk-music legend, Pete Seeger. In the segment, Elizabeth discusses how she came to be employed as a housekeeper by Pete‘s father, musicologist/composer, Charles Seeger, and his stepmother, fellow musicologist/composer, Ruth Crawford Seeger. As it goes, Cotten took a temporary position at a department store in highly-segregated Washington, DC, where she had relocated from North Carolina to be with her daughter. One day, while Ruth was in the store, her daughter Peggy became separated and Cotten reunited the crying child with her mother. Ruth offered her a position working for the family, which Elizabeth took her up on after the holiday season. It would be years before anyone in this musically gifted family had any idea of the remarkable talents that their housekeeper possessed.

In this video, you might notice Pete referring to Cotten as “Libba.” That name, which she is said to have cherished, was given to her by the Seeger children who had difficulty pronouncing “Elizabeth.” You can also see the tremendous level of admiration Pete had for her on a personal level. By all accounts, the family genuinely seems to have loved her.

After they discovered her abilities, Cotten began teaching music to Pete‘s step-siblings, Peggy and Mike. As Peggy‘s folk career took off, she found herself touring and living in the UK. “Freight Train” had become a staple of her performances. One night, a couple that had come to see her repeatedly asked Seeger how to play the tune. 3 months later, the duo (Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey) had copyrighted Libba‘s song, achieved a gold record with it, and even performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show. “Freight Train” would become one of the defining songs of the UK skiffle movement. Peggy later sued to have the copyright and royalties returned to Cotten, allowing her to live out her years in comfort.

Back in the States, Mike had been creating reel-to-reel recordings of Libba in her home. These sessions developed into her debut, Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar (1958), now part of the National Recording Registry. Mike would use his name to bring further visibility to Cotten by taking her on tour and opening for her. The family was clearly in awe of her on every level.

From being the granddaughter of slaves playing on a $4 guitar she purchased with money from wood chopping and housework to having her guitar displayed in the Smithsonian she lived an astounding life. These days, she has a mural and a statue erected in her native Chapel Hill, NC. Meanwhile, Pete Seeger‘s name has been popping up lately due to Ed Norton‘s portrayal of him in the new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. If I didn’t have an aversion to biopics, in general, or fear another Hollywood film about white saviorism, I could make the argument that there is no “complete unknown” more deserving of a film about their life than Libba Cotten.