Elizabeth Cotten.
I have her story in my mind. A story about her. It might be true. It might not be. She is a real person. Was one anyway. You can see how real she is in the photo above. Photos don't never lie. So she definitely had a story. I'm just saying that I might have confused myself by borrowing a few different parts from other people's stories and then brought those pieces together into one story and then gone and attached all of that to her. That is certainly something I've done before.
Look, if you're the kinda person that needs truth above tale, you could Wikipedia your little heart away in the interest of accuracy - though if truth and accuracy is your dope, you probably shouldn't be on this blog anyways, so....
Elizabeth Cotten was born somewhere along The Bible Belt, sometime around the turn of the 20th Century and into something she wasn't ready for. Pop-culture blends that huge part of the world in that particular era into a singular image of balmy afternoons; homemade booze; abject poverty; stained, off-beige undershirts over which is draped a single strap - usually the left side - off a pair of faded, burgundy suspenders; illiterate black folk; clanging and rolling freight trains; cast iron stoves; wide and dusty roads leading to deserted, rural crossroads; rotund, irreverent and racist white men; rotting, wooden roofs; iced tea and chain gangs, rivers, preachers and prayers.
All that is a vast and blurred summation. A generalisation. A stereotype. But as the protagonist in 'Up in the Air' says: "stereotypes are quicker" and those images help you place this story, so we'll just go with that for now. Or forever. Whatever you want.
Elizabeth came into this world, just as dirt-poor as she was black. She never knew if she had what she needed. She only knew what she had when she had it. One day, a week or so past her 11th birthday, a travelling musician left behind a guitar at her daddy's little grocery story. She recognised this immediately as a gift from the universe and grabbed the yellowing instrument of tight, dirty wire laced over worn down wood and took it out the back of the store and straight-up taught herself to play. Not just how to strum or bash hard at the box. See, Elizabeth taught herself how to fingerpick clear and precise in the style of the preachers and the bluesmen that filled her days (remember - we're still in that stereotype/'Brother Where Art Thou' place).
Elizabeth was left-handed, but the strings on the guitar left behind were strung up for a right-hander. This was no matter to her, for she did not know how a guitar should be strung up in the first place. So the young Miss Cotten just ended up working out how to play upside down. Back-to-front. Index finger rolling the bass notes and thumb plucking the melody.
This is something that's quite difficult to do. Real difficult, actually. And there's beauty and consequence if you wanna take pause to discuss it with me one day, but we're gonna continue on...
After working out how to play the few popular and religious songs she liked to sing, Elizabeth decided to take to songwriting. The first song she wrote - this 11 year old, semi illiterate, child who had never traveled further than a mile or two - was a subtly complex ditty called ' Freight Train'. This song - set off by an amazing set of events in her life some 40 years later - would one day be recorded and released and eventually grow into being so important, that it is often the very first song young pickers are taught when they approach learning how to play guitar.
For me, however, the notes aren't what is The Most of the song. It's the lyrics. And in particular, that first goddamn brilliant verse:
Freight Train, Freight Train, run so fast;
Freight Train, Freight Train, run so fast;
Please don't tell them what Train I'm on;
They wont know what route I'm gone
At this point I could tell you that sometimes, in order to find a way to explain what, in The End, it is all about it takes someone somewhere so far from who and where you are to happen upon something left by chance and somehow find a way to make that work. But the truth - as I care to remember it - is that the someone, somewhere, something and somehow should never really matter - only The Ending.
