Elizabeth Cotten

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Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten (née Nevills) (January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter.

A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. She played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down, as she was left-handed. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking".
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43-UUeCa6Jw

"Freight Train" is an American folk song written by Elizabeth Cotten in the early 20th century, and popularized during the American folk revival and British skiffle[2] period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten's own account in the 1985 BBC series Down Home, she composed "Freight Train" as a teenager (sometime between 1906 and 1912), inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in North Carolina.

Cotton was a one-time nanny for folk singer Peggy Seeger, who took this song with her to England, where it became popular in folk music circles. Unfortunately, British songwriters Paul James and Fred Williams subsequently misappropriated it as their own composition and copyrighted it. Under their credit, it was then recorded by British skiffle singer Chas McDevitt who recorded the song in December 1956.

Under advice from his manager (Bill Varley), McDevitt then brought in folk-singer Nancy Whiskey and re-recorded the song with her doing the vocal, the result was a chart hit. McDevitt's version influenced many young skiffle groups of the day including one known as The Quarrymen. Fortunately, under the the advocacy of the influential Seeger family, the copyright was eventually restored to Cotton.. Nevertheless, it remains miscredited in many sources.

The Elizabeth Cotten recording for the Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar album was made by Mike Seeger in late 1957, early 1958, at Cotten's home in Washington, D.C.  Ramblin' Jack Elliott recorded this song in 1957. It is included on the CD, The Lost Topic Tapes: Cowes Harbour 1957.
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