Chords for Acoustic Guitar Lesson - Elizabeth Cotten-style Lesson

_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _
[Gb] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
[Gm] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
[B] _ _ _ [A] _ _ [D] _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [B] _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Hi, my name is Orville Johnson, and I'm a contributing writer to Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and I'm here to play the musical example
that is in Acoustic Guitar's 20th anniversary lesson on Elizabeth Cotton. _
Now she began her career when she was
68 years old and became a key artist in the 1960s folk revival, not just because of her
you know, fantastic and unique
guitar style, which I'm gonna demonstrate a little snippet of, but also because she was a great songwriter,
and she wrote probably one of the most enduring
_ songs of the folk revival that we all know, Freight [Bb] Train, _ _ [Gb] and
[Eb] so _ I'm gonna [F] demonstrate _
her guitar style in this example.
Her guitar playing
_ encompassed bits of _ ragtime
_ styles, Piedmont blues, _ _ _
dance rhythms, dance tunes, and marches, _ and
she played with a delicate touch and
_ _ a beautiful [C] sound, and
so let me play you the example that is written out in the
_ magazine. _ _ _
_ Over here in front of me. _ _
Let's give her a go.
_ [B] _ [C] _ _ _
[Em] _ _ _ [E] _ _ [G] _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _ _
[B] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ [D] _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _
So
that's the example, and so let me just point out a couple of things about it that make it
kind of Elizabeth [B] Cotton style.
One is that change that I put right in the beginning, the [C] C [E] to the E7,
_ _ which of course is in Freight Train, and it's in a bunch of her other [C] songs as well.
If you explore her
catalog, you'll hear that change a bunch, and
that's the 1, C being the 1, to the 3 [E] chord, _ _ _ _ and then
_ _ _ [Am] F back to [Cm] C, and then she plays, or I guess I should say I play, [Gm] this
_ _ passage that [B] goes
[Bb] _ [A] _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ [Ab] going [A] down to the A chord, the 6 chord,
[D] _ _ D, the 2 chord,
[G] and the [F] 5 [C] chord back to the 1, so a 1-6-2-5.
_ [Bb] _ type of progression there, which is characteristic of a lot of ragtime music, _ and
then to finish up the piece, I
played this run,
[F] _ [Gb] _ [G] _ _
[Gm] _ _ _ _ [Gbm] _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
which is also typical of her playing, to
[Bb] sort of put in,
[Eb] spice up her playing [F] with little bass [C] runs that go in between the sections where she's playing the constant alternating bass,
_ [E] _ [F] _ [Gbm] _ [G] _
_ _ _ [C] _ and [A] then at the very end I use one of her
classic endings too, _
_ _ _ _ where she uses the open strings just out of the C chord position.
She played a lot of songs out of the C
position, and G.
Those were two probably most common chord positions and key positions that she would use,
_ _ [Gb] but that's how this ending goes.
_ _ C chord with a little [Gb] emphasis on the low string on the [Cm] root,
then the open [Am] fifth,
_ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
sixth string at 3, and then the open 6, _ and then finishing on the root,
_ [A] _ [Em] _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
all the while
_ plucking the chord with it.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Eb] So you can see the sheet music that accompanies this example, and
the article that goes with it in [C] the Acoustic Guitar
_ _ 20th Anniversary Edition or AcousticGuitar.com
online.
So for Acoustic Guitar, this is Orville Johnson.
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ _