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@nts_radio Elizabeth Cotten wrote one of the most beloved folk songs of the 20th Century when she was only 11 years old. It was only after a chance meeting decades later that the song became famous. A self taught musician, Cotten learned guitar left-handed, using a standard string setup, essentially playing upside down. She wrote "Freight Train" as a child in the early 1900s, inspired by the rumbling carriages rolling down the tracks near her house in North Carolina. In the early 1950s, after Cotten had long retired from guitar playing, she was working as shop assistant, and reunited a lost child with her mother. The mother and child were Penny and Ruth Seeger of the influential Seeger folk dynasty. Cotten began working with the family, caring for their children. She was encouraged by the family to play music again, and re-learned to play the guitar, essentially from scratch, in her 60s. Peggy Seeger went to England in the 1950s, and often performed her one-time nanny's songs – "Freight Train" in particular became very popular in the burgeoning British folk revival. With many mistaking it for a public domain standard, it would end up becoming altered, and copyrighted by a British skiffle act. Copyright would eventually be rightfully returned to Cotten with the help of the Seeger family. Cotten's own first recording of "Freight Train", was in 1957, five decades after she wrote it as a child. It would be covered by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia and countless thousands more. Listen to performances from Cotten, Johnny Cash, Mississippi John Hurt and more with our Guide To: Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, live now: nts.live/1
