How This Self-Taught Guitarist Became a Music Legend

When was around 8 years old, she would slip into her older brother’s room when he was at work, take his banjo off the wall and toy around with it. Immediately, though, little Libba ran into a problem: She was left-handed, while the instrument was right-handed. No matter.

The determined young girl simply turned the banjo upside down and taught herself to play that way. For the treble, or higher notes, she used her thumb; for the bass, her fingers. In time, this distinct finger-plucking approach—characterized by its rhythmic, percolating sound and its lively, emotive melodies—would become known as “Cotten Style,” and these early years of musical exploration served as a prelude to a life and career in which Cotten did everything on her own, wholly original terms.



Born Elizabeth Nevills in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, around 1893, Cotten saved money from her jobs as a babysitter and domestic worker and bought her first guitar for $3.75 (around $130 today) when she was around 11 years old; she named the instrument Stella. By 12, she had written “Freight Train,” a lilting song that movingly captures the sense of liberation that trains symbolized for Black Americans in the South.

“Freight train, freight train, run so fast,” Cotten sings on the chorus. “Please don’t tell what train I’m on / And they won’t know what route I’m going.” Though Cotten is now something of a legend among folk-music enthusiasts, she didn’t achieve commercial success until quit.