Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, born Elizabeth Nevills on January 5, 1893, in Carrboro, North Carolina, emerged as one of the most influential figures in American folk and blues music.
A self-taught, left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed a singular playing style by flipping a right-handed guitar upside down, creating a distinctive technique in which her thumb played the melody and her fingers plucked the bass strings. This unique fingerpicking method became known as “Cotten picking,” and it helped define a musical legacy that continues to reverberate across genres.
Growing up in a working-class family, Cotten was the youngest of five children. By the age of eight, she was already playing music, borrowing her brother’s banjo despite being forbidden to do so. Her first guitar, a $3.75 Sears and Roebuck model, was purchased with money she had saved while working as a domestic servant, earning just $1 a month.
She taught herself to play it in secret, eventually writing songs and mastering a large repertoire of rags and dance tunes. Her most famous composition, “Freight Train,” was written in her early teens and was inspired by the sound of trains near her childhood home…