Biography
In the era of the roots music revival, few guitarists matched the influence of Elizabeth Cotten, whose remarkably fluid and skillful fingerstyle approach profoundly shaped countless musicians who came after her. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, during the first weeks of 1893, she first took up the banjo at eight years old before turning to her brother's guitar, which she positioned across her lap to develop her distinctive picking technique and chords over time. At twelve she began domestic employment, and two years later welcomed her initial child into the world. After becoming involved with the church she set the guitar aside, performing only infrequently across the subsequent twenty-five years. In the early 1940s she moved to Washington, D.C., eventually entering the employ of the famed Charles Seeger household to look after the children Pete, Peggy, and Mike. It was not until ten years afterward that the Seegers discovered her guitar abilities, leading them to document her performances for Folkways and resulting in the release of her first album, Folksongs and Instrumentals, during 1957. Written at age twelve, the song "Freight Train" reached the Top Five in the U.K., which in turn provided opportunities for a number of live shows. This surge of attention prompted her to compose fresh songs that found their way onto her follow-up record, Shake Sugaree. As she grew more at ease on stage, Cotten expanded her performances beyond guitar playing to include personal anecdotes from her life and group sing-alongs of her own compositions, while also retrieving additional childhood melodies and acquiring new repertoire during her travels. Only in 1970 did she cease domestic labor, with regular touring not commencing until the close of that decade. During her later years she received both a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Award and a Grammy, and she passed away on June 29, 1987.
Albums
