Elizabeth Cotten
Musician · 1893–1987 · Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Best known for
Songwriter
Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten was a Chapel Hill-born self-taught left-handed guitarist who composed “Freight Train” as a child of eleven and who, after a half-century working as a domestic, was discovered in her sixties by the Seeger family of Washington, D.C. Her upside-down right-handed guitar technique — bass played with the fingers, melody with the thumb — gave folk and bluegrass guitarists the technique now widely known as “Cotten picking.”
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- Born Elizabeth Nevills on January 5, 1893, in Carrboro near Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
- Was self-taught on banjo and guitar in childhood; played a right-handed guitar held upside down, picking the bass with her fingers and the melody with her thumb.
- Composed “Freight Train” at age eleven, around 1904.
- Set aside music for nearly fifty years to work as a domestic, including years in the Washington, D.C. household of Ruth Crawford Seeger and Charles Seeger (whose children included Mike and Peggy Seeger)
- Began recording for Folkways at age sixty-five; her first album appeared in 1958.
- Performed her first formal concert at age sixty-seven, becoming an unexpected anchor of the 1960s folk revival.
- Secured the copyright to “Freight Train” only in 1957, more than fifty years after writing it.
- Named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984.
- Won the Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording at age ninety in 1985.
- Died June 29, 1987, in Syracuse, New York, at age 94.
