Carrboro Musician Cotten Part of the NC Musician Mural Trail

Mural by Scott NurkinPhoto byKim McKinney

"When I die, Lord, bury me deep
Way down on ol' Chestnut Street
Then I can hear old number nine
As she come rolling by."

- from "Freight Train" by Elizabeth Cotten

Elizabeth "Libba" Nevilles was born into a musical family in Carrboro, NC in 1893. The youngest of five children. she picked up her brother's guitar and the left-handed girl figured out how to make that guitar for right-handers her own.

She worked and worked, first making seventy-five cents a month, to raise the $3.75 that paid for her first guitar.

Her unique style of playing lefthanded and upside-down became known as "Cotten picking".

She was always independent - because she had to be. She believed people didn't need formal training in music or to sound like everyone else. She'd listen and adapt music to fit her and her unusual style of playing. She knew what she liked.

Life for African American women held certain expectations during that time, so Elizabeth married Frank Cotten at age 15 and had a daughter named Lillie at 16. Elizabeth spent a lot of time at church, where her guitar playing was deemed "worldly" and discouraged.

After her mother died, Cotten left the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area and moved to Washington D.C. to live with her daughter. Cotten worked in a department store there when she found a lost child and returned her to her family. That family's name was Seeger, and a month later Cotten was working on Saturdays for them as their housekeeper.

By chance, or providence, Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger were musicians - Ruth a violinist, a composer, and a music teacher, and Charles was a founder of ethnomusicology, which studies music within its social context. Their five children all became folk musicians - Peggy, Barbara, Penelope, Mike, and Pete.

A few years after Cotten started working for the family, their daughter Peggy (the lost child that brought her into their family) found her playing their gut string guitar. Cotten apologized, not realizing that Peggy recognized her talent. Her whole family did. They were instrumental in getting her an audience and there she was, later in life, living her dream of being a musician.

The song that she is most known for, "Freight Train". was written when she was ten or eleven years old and still living in Carrboro/Chapel Hill. She recorded it on her first album - "Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar," recorded in 1958, when she was 65. It has been recorded by many artists now, including Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary.

She took to the road, often performing with the Seegers and helping revive folk music.

Her work was finally being recognized. She won a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording in 1984, her first at age 91.

She continued to perform until just before her death. She continues to influence musicians even today.

Enjoy a little bit of Elizabeth Cotten singing "Freight Train", in her later years, when her musical talent was more widely known and appreciated.

Here are links to other articles I have written from the NC Musician Mural Trail: Nina Simone, Randy Travis (with a picture of the mural of Blind Boy Fuller), and Roberta Flack. More are coming.