Posted
on January 5, 2016
Today
we are celebrating a woman who was born on this date in 1893, got
married at age 17 (not such a rare thing, back then), raised a
daughter named Lillie, and worked off and on as a maid or other
domestic help.
Those
things are important, and honorable, but they are not the reason we
know and remember Elizabeth Cotten. We know her for her music!
Cotton
was raised in a musical family. When she was seven years old, she
began to play her older brother's banjo, and when she was eleven, she
paid $3.75 of her hard-earned money on a Sears and Roebuck guitar.
She
was completely self-taught, and since she was left-handed playing
right-handed instruments, she pretty much played them “upside
down.” She ended up playing the bass lines with her fingers and the
melody with her thumb, a style that became known as “Cotten
picking.”
Cotten
began writing her own songs at age 11 and continued through her teen
years. But she gave up playing and writing music for years and
decades – all those years of being married and raising a family,
mentioned above.
 |
| It's thanks mostly to Mike Seeger that the world knows Cotten's music! |
Flash
forward to Cotten working in a department store, and seeing a child
who had become separated from her mother. Cotten helped the lost
child find her mom—and that mom happened to be composer Ruth
Crawford Seeger. Soon Cotten found herself hired as a maid to help
care for Ruth and Charles Seeger's four kids. The Seeger family was
very musical, and Cotten ended up picking up a guitar again,
relearning the instrument, and remembering her own songs from so long
ago.
Thanks
to the Seegers, Cotten's music – her songs and her signature style
– were recorded and released on albums...starting when Cotten was
in her 60s! She appeared in concerts and folk revivals, and she
influenced many other musicians. Her most famous song, Freight Train, was covered by more famous musicians such as Peter,
Paul, and Mary – Joan Baez – Bob Dylan – Jerry Garcia – and
at least seven others!
Cotten
wrote another album's worth of songs, at least one of which she
recorded with her 12-year-old granddaughter. (The linked You
Tube is Cotten playing guitar and her granddaughter singing.)
Here is yet another video with another original
song or two.
Cotten
continued to tour and record well into her 80s! What a great “third
act”!
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