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Had Elizabeth Cotten died before turning 62*, her daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren would have mourned. The families she worked for would have sent condolences and wiped tears off their children’s cheeks.
Someone would have eulogized her buttermilk biscuits and chicken n’ dumplins at length. Between anecdotes of her childhood mischief, a Baptist preacher would have assured the crowd she’d received her heavenly reward.
God knows she earned it.
But if she had died before her 62nd birthday, a lot wouldn’t have happened. There would be no statue or park bearing her name. The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Pete Seeger wouldn’t have covered her songs. Her family wouldn't have inherited a Grammy.
How to Lose a Guitar in 40 Years
Elizabeth Cotten spent most of her first 80 years working as a maid, cooking, cleaning, and watching children. Domestic work was one of the few options available to a poor Black girl born in the 1890s.
But there was music at home. Her brother had a banjo, and when he left, she saved the money she made cooking and cleaning to purchase a Stella guitar.
The left-handed Cotten (Nevills at the time) never bothered restringing her right-handed guitar. Instead, she flipped it and taught herself to play upside down. When she was 11 or 12, she wrote what would become her biggest hit — “Freight Train.”
She was a grandmother before anyone outside of family and friends heard it. She had other priorities to take care of.
When Cotten joined the Baptist church, the deacons told her she couldn’t play those “worldly” ragtime songs and serve God. While she disagreed with the church leaders, it didn’t matter. She was a wife and mother before turning 18. With dishes to wash, laundry to clean, and skinned knees to mend, she played guitar less and less.
One day she put her Stella down and didn’t pick another one up for nearly 40 years.
The change was so gradual that Cotten couldn’t recall what happened to that old guitar.
The Lost Child is Found
In the early 1940s, Cotten left her alcoholic husband and moved to Washington D.C. to live with her daughter and help raise the grandchildren.
She took a seasonal job selling dolls at the sprawling Lansburgh’s department store. One day a young girl wandered off and got lost.
Cotten found the girl crying for her mother. At this point in her life, she must have wiped away thousands of tears in the decades she spent caring for her child, grandchildren, and the children of all those she worked for. Still, she hated seeing kids cry. When she returned the lost child, Cotten was crying too.
The mother gave Cotten her phone number and told her to call if she needed work, the family could use a hand around the house. She had grandchildren to support, so she took the job.
Cotten had no idea she was about to spend the next decade working for American folk music royalty.
That mother was composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, who had married Charles Seeger (the father of the legendary folk singer Pete Seeger from a previous marriage). They were both musicians and at the forefront of studying and documenting American folk music.
If you were going to put someone in a place where they could rekindle their love of music, you couldn’t create a better home than the Seegers’. They had nearly every type of stringed instrument, and musicians were always coming and going. Half of their children had long careers as folk singers and songwriters (Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger, the lost child).
The children grew close to her, calling her “Libba” when they were too young to pronounce her name properly. Between baking cakes and washing dishes, Libba relearned the guitar.
When the children had their music lessons, she would steal Peggy’s guitar, close the door, and play. Slowly, her childhood love of playing music came back.
Libba’s Taken Care of
Libba’s clandestine jam sessions went unnoticed until one day when she began, “…to enjoy it, like I used to.” She was playing the blues that she couldn’t at the Baptist church, and singing “Freight Train,” but louder than usual. Mike and Peggy barged in, “We didn’t know you played guitar!” They asked her to play that “Freight Train” song again and to teach it to them.
The Seeger kids were her first fans outside of neighbors and family. The children washed the dishes so they could listen to her play. As adults, they introduced her to the world.
When she was in her mid-60s, Mike Seeger produced and recorded her first album. Many of her earliest professional performances were with Mike. Peggy brought “Freight Train” to Europe, where Libba later toured. Pete had her on his TV show.
In the 1980s, Libba started collecting honors and award nominations, winning a Grammy at 90 years old*. She’s still the oldest woman to win a Grammy.
In 2022, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influences category. For what it’s worth, Rolling Stone lists her as the 36th-best guitarist of all time.
The oddest thing about Libba Cotten is, she achieved so much because she had no plans for success.
A more ambitious musician would have ignored a dead-end job offer to help wash the dishes. Someone with focus and direction wouldn’t have time to find their lost child.
Instead of having a dream, Libba took care of the kids, until one day, the kids took care of her.
If she had never recorded a song, never set foot on a red carpet, and never played a show outside her front porch, she still would have been adored by her biggest fans.
*I couldn’t find a consensus on her age, but she was most likely born between 1893-95.
Sources
Stella & Me documentary
2023 Peggy Seeger interview clip
Elizabeth Cotten’s appearance on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest show
Homemade American Music documentary