"Freight Train" is an American folk song written by #ElizabethCotten in the early 20th century, and popularized during the #AmericanFolkRevival and British #skiffle period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten's own account in the 1985 #BBC series Down Home, she composed "Freight Train" as a teenager (sometime between 1906 and 1912), inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in #NorthCarolina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I99jqEk_Prw

"Freight Train" is an American folk song written by #ElizabethCotten in the early 20th century, and popularized during the #AmericanFolkRevival and British #skiffle period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten's own account in the 1985 #BBC series Down Home, she composed "Freight Train" as a teenager (sometime between 1906 and 1912), inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in #NorthCarolina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I99jqEk_Prw

"North Carolina native Elizabeth Cotten (1895–1987) first picked up her brother’s banjo at the age of eight. Left-handed, she taught herself to play the right-handed guitar upside down. As a teenager, she was persuaded by the Baptist church to give up her “devil’s music.” In the 1940s, she began housekeeping for Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer and stepmother of the famous folk singer Pete Seeger. Cotten got acquainted with their son, Mike Seeger, and began playing the guitar again. Cotten won a Grammy in 1985 at the age of ninety for best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for her Arhoolie LP recording, which she recorded in her late eighties. Her finger-picking guitar style has been emulated by numerous folk-guitar players. "Down-Home Music: The Story of Arhoolie Records" is on display, post-security, in Terminal 2. http://bit.ly/StoryofArhoolie" This was posted to our Instagram account on March 21, 2019 – https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/instagram/1763566609/

#NowPlaying Born on this day in 1895, #ElizabethCotten taught herself to play the guitar and banjo as a child. She was left-handed yet played a guitar for a right-hander, meaning she played everything upside down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPibSxgIyw