Chords for Elizabeth Cotten Folk Alliance International 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

_ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
[E] She is folk [F] music's accidental legend, Elizabeth Cotton,
libber to her friends, her thousands and thousands of [G] friends.
But as befits an accidental legend, millions more know her without knowing that they do.
[N] Ask them if they've heard of Elizabeth Cotton, they say no.
Hum a few [G] bars of her song Freight Train, and that all changes.
Freight train, freight train, runs so fast.
Freight train, freight train, [Em] runs so [E] fast.
Please don't tell [F] what a train, not long, [C] they won't know [G] what.
Her [F] best songs are as likely to be heard at coffee houses, concert stages, campfires,
or school bus sing [G]-alongs as any in the American folk canon.
And millions have learned how to play guitar to her spacious, rolling finger style,
known everywhere as Cotton Bigot.
But Libba [E] never intended to be a professional singer, much less a famous songwriter,
an influential guitarist, a legend.
It [A] was all a glorious accident.
[Gm]
She was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1895.
She learned banjo and guitar as a little girl, but stopped playing when she started her own family.
Accidents of fate, and two by one [C] particular little girl, [B] took her back to her [Gb] music.
Near the end of World War II, Cotton had a temporary job at the Landsberg Department Store in Washington, D.C.
After selling some dolls to a friendly mother with two daughters [C] in tow,
Cotton saw one of the kids wandering the aisles by herself, [Ab] nine-year-old Peggy Seeger.
[D] Cotton returned Peggy to her mother, [F] the great composer and arranger [Fm] of folk songs, Ruth [Eb] Crawford [Bb] Seeger,
who told Libba to call if she [Cm] ever wanted another job.
[Bb] She was soon working at the Seeger [F] home.
My earliest memories of her are of gentleness, Peggy [Cm] recalls now.
She was an extremely [Bb] gentle woman.
[F] She spoke slowly, [Bb] and I don't think I ever saw her angry.
She adored my mother, and my mother adored [F] her.
They would sit and talk for hours.
Peggy Seeger's [C] second accident was the one that gave Elizabeth Cotton to the world.
Being the Seeger household, there were musical instruments hanging everywhere, [Cm] including a small guitar in the [C] kitchen.
Cotton would pull it down when no one was [Bb] around, close the door, and play quietly to herself.
One day, Peggy [G] walked in on [C] her.
Libba immediately stood up, began [Cm] to apologize.
[Bb] Stay right there, [G] Peggy said, and ran to get [Bb] her older brother, Mike.
They made [F] her play [Fm] and play and play,
and became the [F] first of millions of young people to learn how to fingerpick [C] for her.
Nights [F] at dinner time, I'd cook dinner and put my dinner on the table,
[F] and that's about all the work I'd have to do.
The kids would clear the table, [C] wash my dishes, [F] tell me to sit down and play freight train.
Another of Cotton's songs was created in the old way, over much time.
[Eb] She used it as a bedtime game to lure children to sleep by letting them make up verses the way she had as a little girl.
It is a true traditional folk song, written over generations and handed along [Gb] one to the next,
but [F] all by the same woman, first as child, then mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
It is now one of the most beloved folk songs in the world, [C] called Shake Sugary.
This is a song that my seven, eight grandchildren wrote this song.
[G] _ I mean great-grandchildren.
_ _ Shake Sugary, [C] each child got a verse, _ [G] _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ [C] but I don't know all [G] the verses,
so I'm going to sing what I can remember [C] right now. _
_ Y'all going to help [G] me sing this? _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ [C] _ _
I know [A] something [C] I ain't going to tell.
_ [F] I'm going to heaven in a ground pea shell.
Oh Lord, oh me, [Cm] didn't I shake sugary.
_ Everything [G] I got is in the [C] palm.
_ [F] _ [Gb] _ [C] Everything [G] I got is in [C] the palm. _ _ _
I have a [A] little secret _ [C] I ain't going to tell.
[F] I'm going to heaven, and I ain't going down to.
_ Oh Lord, oh me, didn't [C] I shake sugary.
Everything [G] I got is in the palm.
_ _ [C] _ [G] Everything I got [C] is in the palm.
[G] The Seeger family made sure that Cotton's music was known to the burgeoning folk revival.
[Eb] In 1958, she recorded her first album for [E] Folkways Records,
and her song Freight Train traveled the [B] world.
Campus hootenannies were full of kids who learned how to play to that song,
[Eb] though no one could quite get her fingering right.
Cotton [E] played a right-handed guitar left-handed, upside [B] down,
playing the bass [Gb] strings with her fingers, the treble melody with her thumb.
[Bb] Libba performed into her 90s, often with her most stalwart champion and first [Eb] pupil, Mike Seeger.
[F] John Ullman, in [G] his wonderful liner notes to Smithsonian Folkways' 2004 [Bb] album Shake Sugary,
recalls an elderly Cotton [Fm] singing for a group of children.
With all the bluntness of innocence, a nine-year-old boy asked her,
[Eb] How come you're not dead yet?
While all the grown-ups in the room gasped, Libba smiled fondly at the [F] boy.
I guess the good Lord's just not ready for me [Bb] yet, she said.
She always made sure that her children, as she called all her [Ebm] audiences,
got what [Bb] they came for.
Oh, now, children, she'd say, have I played you my freight train?
I know you love that freight train.
_ [G] You want to sing it? _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ All right.
_ [F] Freight train, freight train, run. _ _
Freight train, freight [Bb] train, run so fast.
[D] Please don't tell what [Eb] train I'm on.
[Bb] They won't know what route I'm gone.
_ When I die, [F] Lord, bury me deep.
Way [Bb] down on old Chelsner Street.
[D] Then I can hear old [Eb] number nine
As she comes rolling by.
[G] I'd lay in bed at night and hear Stuart on the track, trying to come in.
[D] And he said, choo-choo [Gm]-choo, chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga.
[G] And I'd go to sleep hearing that the rest of the night.
[Bbm] So I guess that gave me a mind to write something about the freight [F] train. _
Freight train, freight train, [Eb] run so fast.
[F] Freight [Bb] train, freight train, run so fast.
[D] _ Please don't tell [Eb] what train I'm on.
[Bb] They won't know what route I'm gone.
She was a queen, Peggy Seeger said, remembering [Am] her dear [F] Libba now so many [Cm] years later.
Then [F] she rephrased that to be sure it was the compliment she meant it to be.
[D] No, that's not quite it, Peggy said.
Elizabeth [Eb] Cotton was what a queen should [Bb] be. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ [Eb] _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [F] _
_ _ [Ebm] _ _ [Bb] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [N] _