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Elizabeth Cotten: A Legend

By Mary Walsh

Her eyes dancing under the wide-brimmed straw hat she had borrowed to counter the glare of the stage lights, Elizabeth Cotten, the noted 86-year-old guitarist and folksinger, charmed a large and enthusiastic crowd at her concert here May 9, the last stop on a six-week tour. Appearing with her old friend Mike Seeger, Elizabeth amply demonstrated why, although she has been performing professionally only since she was about 65, she has built a major reputation as an innovative musician.

Elizabeth Cotten is a remarkable woman. Born in 1895 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, she was the daughter of an iron miner and dynamite setter who ran a still on the side. Her mother was a midwife, and one of the best cooks in Chapel Hill-earning $5 a month. Elizabeth went to school only until the fourth grade, when she quit at age 12 to go to work as a domestic for $.75 per month.

Elizabeth saved her money to fulfill a dream-to buy a guitar. She had taught herself to play her brother's banjo, but because she was left-handed, she played it upside down.

"I learned the banjo upside down and 1 couldn't [reverse the strings] because it belonged to my brother. Then when I bought the guitar, so much said about 'You better change the strings, you can't play it left-handed,' they was changed as much as two or three times. And I could not play it. I couldn't tune it, I couldn't do anything with it. So I just sat down ---and took all the strings off, then I put 'em back on like this and I stopped askin'. I started playing, learning different little tunes on it. Get one little string and then add another little string to it and get a little sound, then start playing." She also began to write songs, her most famous one, "Freight Train," being written when she was 11 or 12 years old.

"I don't know nothing about no notes, I can't read music. You just get a song and know it and just keep fooling around with it 'til you get it to sound like you want it to sound. And whether it's right or wrong I just go on with it if it sounds to suit me. If you're singing a song, whatever you're playing on, there's a little extra something you're doing, the bass or the other hand one, that'll make it a little different. I tried hard to play, I'm telling you. I worked for what I've got, I really did work for it."

In her early teens, however, Elizabeth "got religion" and was told by the deacon of her church that she had to stop playing those worldly songs. Unfortunately, she took his advice to heart and gave up her music for almost 30 years. She married at age 15, and her only child Lillie was born when she was 16.

Elizabeth worked as a domestic for many years, eventually moving to New York to be with her husband, the first black to operate his own garage on South Broadway. In 1946 or 1947, however, a coincidence occurred which changed her life. Divorced from her husband, she was working in a department store when a child got lost and Elizabeth-returned her to her mother. The woman shopper was composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, and she and Elizabeth took an immediate liking to each other. In 1947 or 1948, Elizabeth was employed as a domestic by the Seeger household. The child she had found, Peggy Seeger, was learning how to play the guitar, and the whole family often sang on Saturday nights with father Charles or Peggy playing guitar and her brother Mike Seeger playing autoharp. Ruth Crawford Seeger was also compiling a collection of folk songs for children, and collected a few from Elizabeth.

"I forgot I could play guitar....There was nobody around played no guitar. Didn't even

hear a guitar name called. Then when I went to work for them I heard all that music and just kept a-hearing all that pretty guitar music, and I said, 'I used to could play the guitar,' and 1 decided to play it...and I got [Peggy's] guitar and started playing. I was just playing what 1 had learned how to play down in Chapel Hill...and the more I could play it the better I could play it..... And I'd feel so good after I'd do that...."

Elizabeth Cotten and Mike Seeger shared a joint concert at Swarthmore College in 1959, the first professional playing job for both, and afterward she worked as a musician sporadically except for a period in the mid-60's when there was a flurry of activity for traditional and revival musicians. Not until the mid-70's, when Elizabeth Cotten was in her early eighties, did she begin working fairly steadily as a musician.

"I love to feel independent, I do....I feel good. I'm proud of myself. I didn't know I could do all these things that I'm starting and the more I think about it the more I think I can do it." Elizabeth is now well-known as a creative guitarist with an unusual picking style due to her upside down guitar. She has played at Newport and all the other major folk festivals, and has recorded three albums for Folkways Records. In her mid-80's, she is now a full-time road musician.

Elizabeth Cotten's concert style is warm, engaging and full of humor. She invites-insists on-audience participation, and shares with her audience her personal history and that of her music. Although many of her songs are gospel-oriented, she once again also writes and sings "worldly" songs, especially the blues.

"I think about'em a lot and I don't see where there's so much sin in it. I say them words, they come to you just like a song you make of the gospel. They come from inside of your heart, and do you know why? Because you've been mistreated. It could be your mother, your father, your sister, your sweetheart, your husband, or your dear friend....You know, if you get hurt you know how you feel heavy? And them words just busts out of you, you got to make a song or talk about it or do something....That song's comin' from the inside.... Yes, indeed. All the songs come from your heart. Good ones and bad ones. I reckon the worst songs that ever was come from a person's heart...."

Listening to Elizabeth Cotten is a pleasure and an inspiration. Her serenity and humor are a true affirmation of life

"A lot of old people my age don't have nowhere to go, ain't got no comfort at all, and wherever they're living they're either cold, probably don't have much food...and I can say thank the Lord I got out of that before I got too old, and now in my older days I am pretty comfortable.

I said to myself this morning--boy, look at the wrinkles there....My fingers has lost so 1 can't wear my ring all the time...it just slips right off...that's what happens to you when you get near about 85. By the time I'm getting into 86 I guess I'll get a wrinkle somewhere up in the forehead I reckon.

When a person gets as old as I am I think it's time to think about doin' somethin'. You goin' to make a change sometime. Pretty soon, you know. I don't worry about it."

-Material excerpted from Folkways Records Album FA 3537

Page 6/What She Wants/June, 1981