Subject: RE: Where is Elizabeth Cotten's grave?
From:
Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 03:31 AM
An account of Elizabeth's Cotten's introduction into the Seeger household, from 'Ruth Crawford Seeger – a composer's search for American music', Judith Tick, 1997
Jim Carroll
"By the mid-1940s, Crawford hired housekeepers more or less full-time. The patterns shifted according to book deadlines: some years she did without; other years, she had help in seven days a week. Like so many middle-class women in Washington, she relied on the cheap and desperate labor pool o: African American women. They came and went, some acknowledged in Crawford's books, others remembered fondly by the children. But one in par¬ticular was thrust into prominence within the folk revival world initially be¬cause of her association with the family. Elizabeth or "Libba" Cotten (so nick¬named by Penny) often told of her serendipitous encounter with "a fine looking lady" in 1948. Working in a department store where black customers could not go beyond the first floor, she returned a lost Peggy Seeger to her mother and in turn received an invitation to work in the Seeger home. Cotten was a gifted instrumentalist. Her story—success through the universal ap¬peal of her song, "Freight Train"; the widespread imitation of the "Cotten" left-handed style of guitar playing; her prominence as a folk artist—all that happened after Crawford's death. But the musical sympathies between them were captured on a family-made tape, ca. 1950. An eager documentor tries to persuade her tired maid to talk about her folkways. They sit on the floor and pat rhythms. "Get the banjo out more, remember some of those things again," Ruth says plaintively. "Oh, Libba, sing me—just before you go—the one you were doing out in the kitchen . . . and I said, now we have to get it." Libba sings "Snake Bake a Hoecake" and "Old Cow Died," both used in Animal Folk Songs for Children. Ruth is in her element, doing field work in her own house."
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