While Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten first started playing music in her childhood, it wasn't until decades later that she truly established her prowess as a folk revolutionary.
Born in January 1893, Cotten began working domestically at the age of nine. After leaving school for work and saving a bit of money, by age 12, she purchased her first guitar.
A left-handed individual, Cotten's self-taught method saw her playing the guitar upside down.
While learning dance and ragtime music, Cotten had begun writing her own—"Freight Train," one of her most widely-recognized songs, was written around this time.
"I've heard ‘Freight Train' so much, that's not my favorite any more," said Cotten, during an interview with the San Diego Reader in 1981.
"I've had to play it so much. I wrote that song when I was living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was ten or eleven and I didn't have a guitar yet.
She continued: "There was a place not far from home where we would stand, and when the train would go and come we would wave at the train. There was only but one track. I always liked trains anyway."
As a teenager, she married a man named Frank Cotten. She gave up music to raise a family in the church, and did not touch an instrument for over 20 years.
While working at a department store nearly 30 years later, Cotten helped a lost young girl relocate her mother. They exchanged contacts, and the mother—who just so happened to be Ruth Crawford Seeger—basically hired her as a housekeeper on the spot.
After working for the family—which also included Charles Seeger (father of PeteSeeger), and his and Ruth's children; Mike, Peggy, Barbara and Penelope—for about five years, Cotten began playing the instruments available around the house.
She reportedly "had almost forgotten how to play," but having "all those instruments around reminded her and she just took them down and started to play," according to Mike Seeger. He began recording with Cotten shortly thereafter.
"We recorded her whole album with her on the second floor of her house, with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren all hanging around while we were recording late at night. It was very homey," he said, to the San Diego Reader.
"That got the idea around, the idea that she could play. At that time there was no possibility of playing concerts; people just didn’t do that. A couple of years later, largely as a result of that record, we had a possibility of putting a concert on together and so we did."
Cotten's first live show was at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania; she later went on to play the major folk festivals, including UCLA, Smithsonian, Philadelphia, Newport, and Chicago.
In 1972, Cotten was awarded the National Folk Burl Ives Award for her contribution to American folk music. She went on to win a Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in 1985, around the age of 90.
In 1987, just a few weeks before she died, Cotten played her final show in New York City. She passed away on June 29, at the age of 94.
Her legacy lives on: covers of her songs include "Oh, Babe, It Ain't No Lie," by the Grateful Dead, "Shake Sugaree" by Bob Dylan, and her classic, "Freight Train" by many—reportedly even The Beatles, according to author Mark Lewisohn'sThe Complete Beatles Chronicles, though a recorded version is yet to be unearthed.
Cotten was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
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