Here's a playing style: Cotten picking.
Elizabeth, or “Libba,” was left-handed, so to make the guitar and banjo easier, she just turned them upside down. This positioning created her own method of playing the bass strings with her fingers, and the melody with her thumb - eventually becoming widely known as “Cotten picking.” In her early teens, she was already writing her own songs, such as her most recognized, “Freight Train.” She married Frank Cotten when she was 15, and had one child, Lillie. The local church community pressured to give up her “worldly” guitar playing - secular music - so she did.
Years later, Lillie grew up and had her own children, Libba and Frank moved to D.C. to be closer to family. She got a job working at a department store, and one day she was helping a lost little girl find their mother. The child was Peggy Seeger, the daughter of American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger and renowned folklorist and teacher Charles Seeger. A month later, she started working as a maid for the famous folk-singing family. A few years passed, and one day Peggy came home to discover Libba playing the family’s gut-stringed guitar. She apologized for using the instrument without asking, but Peggy was blown away by what she heard. It had been 40 years, and Libba had picked up the instrument again and re-learned it nearly from scratch, just as she did in secret as a little girl.
Not long after, Peggy’s brother Mike started doing reel to reel home recordings of Libba, who was now 62 years old, making her debut album. It was titled: Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and was released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1958. At the time, there weren’t many authentic folk-music albums readily available besides this one, and it’s considered one of the most influential for guitar players.
