Record #:

22227

Author(s):

Shaffer, Josh

Abstract:

Elizabeth \"Libba\" Cotton grew up in Carrboro around the turn of the 20th Century. She bought a guitar with money she made cooking, cleaning, carrying water, and chopping wood. She learned to play the guitar, but held it upside-down, playing it lefty. She wrote songs about the life she experienced. Those songs would later be performed by the likes of Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. It was a chance encounter in the late 1940s with folk specialist Ruth Crawford Seeger that brought her talent before the world. Her appearances included Carnegie Hall and the Newport Folk Festival. Cotton died in 1987 at age 92.

Source:

Our State (NoCar F 251 S77), Vol. 82 Issue 3, Aug 2014, p36-37, por

Subject(s):

Folk artists--Carrboro; Cotton, Elizabeth (Libba), 1895?-1987