“Freight Train” was written by Elizabeth Cotten (1893-1987) in the early 20th century when she was performing in and around her hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Cotten stopped performing for many years while raising a family and was “rediscovered” by the Seeger family, for whom she was working as a domestic and nanny — for Mike and Peggy, but not their older half-brother Pete — in the early 1950s. Because she was left-handed, Cotten played a standard guitar upside down, with the bass strings at the bottom. Her alternating bass style, played with her forefinger, became known as Cotten picking, though right-handed guitarists naturally play the bass line with their thumb.
Peggy Seeger moved to the UK in the mid-50s with her husband Ewan MacC0ll, also a folksinger, bringing “Freight Train” with her. It was recorded in 1956 by Nancy Whiskey and Chaz McDevitt, who scored a skiffle hit, said to have influenced the Quarrymen who went on to other genres under another name. A couple of British songwriters misappropriated the copyright, which Cotten was finally able to reclaim with the help of the Seeger family (yes, that’s somewhat ironic, given Pete’s habit of misappropriating copyrights for himself).
The clips are at The Faculty Lounge.
Posted by Steve Lubet on July 29, 2023 at 06:32 AM