Elizabeth Cotten

By findagrave.com/photos/2008/23

Elizabeth Cotten (1893-1987) kicks off our Women Guitar player series. One of the main reasons I have chosen her is because of the monumental reach and influence she had over many folk guitar players in the future. Do click on the links to enrich your consumption of this blog. With our digital age making things so much easier to access and accomplish, it is quite amazing what was accomplished in the early days before technology.

Elizabeth Cotten was an American blues and folk singer as well as a songwriter. She was a self-taught, left-handed guitar player, that played a Sears and Roebuck acoustic guitar, strung for right- handers, upside down. As a result, she developed a unique finger-picking style that is today called “Cotten Picking.” This style has gone on to influence many guitar players (Encyclopedia.com, 2019).

She got a hold of her brother’s guitar at age 9 and began writing songs around the age of 11. “Freight Train”, (click on the link) which became her biggest hit later in life, was a song she wrote as a teenager (Carley, 2000). After getting married around 17, she gave up the guitar for family and church. Not until she reached her 60s, when she was briefly working in a department store, did she become inspired to play again, and also when she became acquainted with the Seeger family, a very musically enthusiastic family, which included national folk music stars Mike and Pete Seeger (Carley, 2000).

Mike Seeger made reel-to-reel recordings of Elizabeth’s original music which later turned into an album called Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar put out by Folkways Records which was acquired in 1987 by the Smithsonian Institute. Shortly after this release she began playing concerts with Pete Seeger. Her biggest hit “Freight Train” has been covered by other famous folk artists such as , Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Jerry Garcia. 

For more in depth exploration of this amazingly influencial artist, see the references below, until next time.

Carley, M. (2000). Libba Cotton's guitar: Left-handed, she taught herself to play, wrote the folk classic “Freight Train” and sang into her 90s. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/libba-cottens-guitar-32846747/

"Elizabeth Cotten." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Retrieved April 20, 2019 from Encyclopedia.com:https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/elizabeth-cotten