Elizabeth Cotten: Trains, Folk Songs and Standards

Born in a relatively small North Carolina town not too far from Chapel Hill, Elizabeth Nevills grew up around her musician brothers and borrowed their gear while no one was looking. If anyone had been paying attention, though, they most likely would have been shocked. As it was, Nevills developed her style in private, playing for herself on the banjo more frequently than a six string guitar to begin with. But after cobbling together some money she earned as a maid, the nascent musician purchased herself a guitar.

There’s not be a tremendous explanation as to why Nevills laid her guitar flat on her lap to beginning with, but it might have had something to do with being left handed – as we can assume that if there aren’t a vast many lefty instruments now, in the early 20^th century there couldn’t have been too many available in the rural south. Regardless, by her teenage years, Nevills had developed a unique approach to playing, but she was soon married off and took the name Cotten, but left music behind.

Years passed and her daughter was eventually married, which prompted Cotten to leave her husband and take up with her new son-in-law and his family. Winding up in Washington D.C. was just a fluke, but one day while shopping Cotten found a lost girl in a department store. The young girl wound up being the sister of Pete and Mike Seeger, the children of Charles, a noted musicologist. Being around a family so concerned with music and its roots, Cotten eventually picked up the guitar again and amazed her employers. What resulted was a new career and a few recorded works during the fifties that could be considered the beginning of the folk boom that would take place during the following decade.

Cotten would record until her death in the late ‘80s, but it’s the first few albums that she set to tape with the assistance of the Seeger family that comprise her legacy. Folksongs & Instrumentals with Guitar was recorded in 1958 (re-issued by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 1989 as Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes) and represents the first time the guitarist and singer was in-front of a microphone. The results are still influencing players today.

Having squirreled away so much music, but distanced by time, it’s not surprising that Cotten had difficulty recalling some compositions. But with a bit of practice, it seemed to all come back to her slowly. “Spanish Flagdang,” which can’t be made sense of as a phrase, is a spectacular exhibition of playing behind the beat. Of course, the fact that Cotten simultaneously keeps time for her own melody makes the performance all the more exciting. A few other offerings over the course of Folksongs & Instrumentals with Guitar have impacted the blues and folk genre with “Vastopol” even being versioned by John Fahey.

With or without the support of such touted musicians, Cotten’s work is going to remain an indispensible pillar of American music until everything we hold dear is lost to time. That can’t even be construed as hyperbole, her music’s that good.