Born in 1893 in Chapel Hill, Elizabeth Cotten grew up hearing the music.
She heard it in the hum of household appliances, in the gentle patter of rain against rooftops, when the trains chattered down their tracks and in the wind crashing through the trees; all musical notes to be plucked from out of the atmosphere and twisted to her command.
Cotten grew up the youngest of five children during the Jim Crow era, learning the harsh reality of life for a black family early; there would never be any music lessons for her.
Still, the gift lived within her and at age 7 Cotten began playing her older brother’s banjo whenever he wasn’t home.
Cotten didn’t know how to play, all she knew was she wanted to feel the electricity and excitement of strumming her hands across those living strings. Without a teacher, Cotten didn’t even know how to hold the banjo. She was left-handed and the instrument was made to be played by someone right-handed, so Cotten played the way that felt most natural to her — upside down.
It may not have looked technically right, but the music pouring out from beneath her strumming fingers was that of a genius.
Finally finding a way to release the melodies bottled up inside her, playing her brother’s “borrowed” banjo became addictive for the young girl. So much so, Cotten began socking money away until she saved $3.75 — just enough to buy her very own Stella parlor guitar from the Sears catalogue.
Her guitar arrived in a simple brown box that Cotten carried home with a spirit of reverence. Feeling like quite a grown lady, Cotten lovingly ran her hands down the shiny, lacquered wood of her guitar, absent-mindedly strumming its tight, new strings as musical notes danced through her head.
Not any surer of how to play the guitar than her brother’s banjo, Cotten continued her unique style of playing string instruments upside down, and at the age of 11 she wrote the song that would one day earn her a grammy; “Freight Train.”
As a child growing up in North Carolina, Cotten was familiar with seeing people she didn’t know boarding trains to places she would never go. Trains came to represent an avenue for escape and possibility for Cotten.
One day Cotten’s own metaphorical train pulled into the station and when it did, she retired her guitar at the age of 17.
Elizabeth married Frank Cotten in 1910, leading the budding musician to lay aside her dreams and mute the music always buzzing within her, to be a wife and mother.
Cotten had a beautiful little girl that she and Frank named Lillie and she settled into her life as a maid.
She scrubbed clothes and cleaned houses for families who could afford music lessons for their kids. But even as the days stacked against her and callouses hardened on her hands and feet, the music locked inside her hummed.
She told herself the music she still heard belonged to a girl the woman had forgotten, and for 25-years Cotten did not touch a guitar.
Yet fate has a way of intervening when talent is real and the gift pure, and like the wheels on Cotten’s freight train, fate was already spinning in her favor.
After divorcing Frank, she moved to Washington, D.C., in the late 1940s, and found a job at Lansburgh’s department store. One day at work, a lost little girl wandered over to her. Cotten helped the girl find her mother and the two women struck up a conversation. Not long after the incident, Cotten began working as the family’s housekeeper.
She cooked the meals, washed and folded laundry, and cleaned the home for Ruth and Charles Seeger — a family of musical geniuses.
Ruth was a famous composer and the first woman to win a Guggenheim, and her husband Charles was a musicologist and is a founder of the field of ethnomusicology. Their children — Peggy, Mike, and half-brother Pete — would later become American musical folk sensations in their own rights.
While busily doing her work, Cotten was keenly aware of the music drifting from out of the rooms down the hall, but she never mentioned her talent to the Seegers.
One day a guitar was left lying about the Seeger home by an imp of fate, or a Seeger child, when Cotten decided to pick it up!
Beneath her rough hands the years melted away until only a little girl with a dream and a gift life could not silence remained.
Flipping the instrument upside down, her wizened hands flew across the strings like magnetic lightning. Melodies Cotten had left unwritten, unsung, for 25 years flooded the home, electrifying every corner until only a heavy, deafening silence echoed back.
In the silence, Cotten’s whole world changed.
From every end of the house, the Seeger family came running. They had never heard music played with such haunting beauty before.
When the Seeger’s asked her to play more, Cotten proudly strummed “Freight Train.”
Now in her mid-60s, the family helped Cotten record with Folkways Records in 1958.
A song she wrote nearly half a century before as a poor, 11-year-old girl growing up in Chapel Hill, was suddenly going from a song hummed in her heart to one played on the airwaves.
Cotten’s music introduced the world to what became known as “Cotten-Picking”—or two hands doing the work of two guitars—and her song “Freight Train” took over the folk revival community, like, well, a freight train.
Her life forever changed, Cotten performed in small folk music clubs and festivals. Her performances were known for being graceful, lilting, and haunting.
During every performance, she grew more beloved as attendees racked their brains trying to figure out how she could play her instrument upside down while her music sounded so perfect.
Neither the Seeger family nor Cotten ever forgot the bond they shared.
Pete Seeger often performed “Freight Train” at his concerts and Joan Baez also recorded her own version of Cotten’s famous song. Greats like Doc Watson and Jerry Garcia credit her as an influence on their own techniques.
At the age of 90, Cotten was recognized at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards on February 26, 1985 for her contribution to music. She won Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for her album Elizabeth Cotten: Live!
When giving her acceptance speech, Cotten thanked the Seegers, her family, and all those who helped take “Freight Train” from a song in her head to one loved internationally.
Elizabeth Cotten proves talent can never really be locked away and a humble attitude can quietly move mountains — just like a freight train.
The audience gave her a standing ovation.
“Freight train, freight train, run so fast,
Please don’t tell what train I’m on,
They won’t know what route I’ve gone.”