Elizabeth Cotten
Folksongs and Instrumentals With Guitar

My name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth Nevills, then Mrs. Cotten. However, everyone, starting with my four brothers, calls me "Libba." I was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I've been playing since I was 7 years old, even though it was really difficult to get the instrument I dreamed of, the guitar. To buy one, a few years later, I learned from my mom the job of a domestic worker, the occupation of many women like me.

I taught myself to play. I felt transported by the music I heard. I never had any other teachers. Zero musical notions. Zero instrumental knowledge. Not even of the banjo. So, without knowing it, I played everything inverted. I hold the guitar upside down. I'm left-handed. But I never reversed the order of the strings. So, as they later explained to me, I play the bass strings at the bottom and the high strings at the top. Opposite! So I also changed the way of my left hand to pluck the strings. It seemed logical to me. To others, it's crazy, at best uncomfortable. I do, in a sense, reverse fingerpicking. I play the bass with my index fingernail and the melodic notes with my thumb. You're supposed to pluck the bass with the thumb, the highs with the index and middle finger. But what did I know! For me, that's just right. The opposite of something isn't necessarily wrong.

It seems that today my humble "two-fingerpicking" or, as some say, "Cotten-picking" is quite an important example of old American folk. It seems absurd to me to call it a guitar style. It seems absurd to see my name next to those of John Hurt and John Fahey. My way of syncopating isn't so accentuated. I focus on the bass to build the pieces. I use various tempos and rhythms. That's it. I lull on the rhythm, then fit the notes until it possibly becomes my music. Don't talk to me about style. I don't know what that is. I only know the music I love. The 'parlor-style,' the old-time country music, country-blues, ragtime, and religious hymns. You hear the blues and ragtime in "Wilson Rag" and "Washington Blues." The parlor in "Spanish Fang Dang" and "Sweet Bye Bye/What A Friend We Have In Jesus," where I pluck high notes and bass notes together. That's all there is.

I played in church in Carrboro. Then, at 17, I married Frank. We had a precious little girl, Lillie "Regina." We had to move often for work: North Carolina, Washington D.C., New York City. So I gradually stopped playing. When Regina got married, I decided to go with her. In 1953 I was working with the Seeger family, in New York. I was exactly 60 years old. Charles and Ruth Seeger were two good people. I was their trusted maid. I adored their children, especially Peggy and Mike. They were good with music. They studied it with unconditional devotion. Pete, the eldest, had already made his mark in that world. That year he recorded traditional children's songs, singing and amiably playing the banjo. You know "Jim Along Josie"? Even Peggy, shortly after, and Mike, in the '60s, carved their space in American folk music. It was a family vice.

One day we were celebrating "Animal Folk Song," Peggy's second album, and by chance, I played, overcoming shyness, my dearest song, "Freight Train." I wrote it when I was 15. It talks about the freight train I heard whistling not far from home. It talks about death simply because it's part of life. Today no one talks about it anymore. We've removed it as if we were immortal. Well, for me, it's just a departure! I made it a sort of lullaby, so much so that I sang it to my siblings to make them fall asleep.

Freight train, freight train, run so fast

Freight train, freight train, run so fast

Please don't tell what train I'm on

They won't know what route I'm going

When I'm dead and in my grave

No more good times here I crave

Place the stones at my head and feet

And tell them all I've gone to sleep

When I die, oh bury me deep

Down at the end of old Chestnut Street

So I can hear old Number Nine

As she comes rolling by

The point is, Mike was stubborn about making me play again. How silly! I who had played only at home and in church. And mostly, I had stopped playing for almost thirty years! The Seegers got me to start again! They were amazed by my unorthodox "style."

Giving music back to my memories was the most incredible thing in my life! Mike, at some point, even got it into his head to make me record an album for Folkways. I, who was already the fine age of 65?! Eh?! And yet!

In "Folksongs & Instrumentals With Guitar," a collection I like to summarize in terms of "country ragtime," I included precisely "Freight Train," the song I would like to be remembered for one day. That distant whistle was wonderful! I managed well with the guitar. But the voice embarrassed me terribly. I put my feeble, uncertain singing into it. I hope it makes you feel a bit of tenderness. And that you find within it the calm, peace, serenity that inspired the song. I hope, precisely because there I brush on uncertain destinations.

Some scholar, they're called "ethnomusicologists," I think, claims that I influenced many white musicians in the '50s and '60s who adopted black fingerpicking. Boh! I didn't invent fingerpicking. No one invented it alone. Sure. I can tell you that, thanks to this 1958 recording, John Fahey and Leo Kottke honored me with their gratitude. Fahey even claims to have been inspired by me, by the way I adapt and cross my various influences, by my use of open tunings. He's too kind!

I had the opportunity to perform at the Newport Folk Festival and the Smithsonian Festival Of American Folklife, I played with Mississippi John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters.

Nine years after the first one, I took a bit of time and released a second record, "Shake Sugaree," with "Washington Blues." In 1979 I released my third album, "Vol. 3: When I'm Gone." And I also do "tours"! I still sing and play in public today, at the tender age of 94. Mike accompanies me. Essentially he helps me onto the stage! He tunes the guitar when needed, always with that respectful and affable manner of his. You know how it is, I've got some aches. Imagine! But I play. And I sing with my fragile voice, but with all the kindness I can muster. If I ever had a real style, I'd want it to be sweet and calm, caressing and intimate. I would count on it. If I were capable, I'd want to move you, at least a little. Maybe with "Freight Train"! I hope I can make you feel a bit of wisdom in that song I wrote when I was just a little girl. It's a sort of presage. That mysterious meeting of will and destiny! Things that, in short, change your life, or are life. Its melody, I tell you seriously, is a kind of archetype of my soul. I have no fear in confiding it. Surely you feel the affection I've put within. If you feel even a little bit, know that I'm already being a grandmother to you! And that was what I was waiting for.

When I die, I believe happy and full of days, I hope I can continue to feel a joy similar to what music has given me. I have no words to define it other than simple.

The train, for its part, will keep running.

Syracuse, New York, June 28, 1987