I've been reading Flannery O'Connor all week; so this is my post about Elizabeth Cotten. It must be because I've been Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (mp3).
→[More:]


Cotten, who wrote Freight Train (mp3) when she was only twelve taught herself to play guitar left-handed. This Google html of a long article about Cotten talks about how she taught herself to play, the sources of some of her songs, and the tunings that she used.

When you listen to her playing it's easy to hear other finger pickers. For instance, I hear a lot of similarities between the opening bars of her Wilson Rag (mp3) and Fahey's Desperate Man Blues (mp3), especially the first, brighter recording (mp3) of it. Though in this interview Fahey says he did not learn much from Cotten even though he liked hanging out with her, this site claims that Poor Boy Long Ways from Home (mp3) (and the rerecording (mp3) is based on Cotten's Vestopol (mp3), and it's easy to hear the influence. The same site points out the similarity between the bass line in Sun Gonna Shine In My Back Door Someday Blues (mp3) (and the rerecording (mp3)) and Cotten's Honey Babe Your Papa Cares For You (mp3).

Cotten stopped playing guitar for about 25 years, after she got married at 15 and joined the church. It was only later, when she had moved to DC and was fortuitously working for the Seeger family that she began to play again.

The combination of Cotten's reedy voice and the masterful drone (played with her fingers!) on When I Get Home (mp3) make it my favorite song of hers, although this banjo medley (mp3) is also great.

By the end of her life she'd won two grammy awards and become a hero of American folk musicians. Dylan has recently been playing her songs live.

Discography.
A remembrance.
An extensive (geocities) site on Cotten.
An All Songs Considered show that features Cotten (In .smil, I'm not sure what that is, but it doesn't seem to want to play on my Mac. It could be the firewall at work.)
Smithsonian Folkways Cotten page, with plenty of streaming songs.