| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Freight Train Blues
00:04:53
|
|
| I'm gonna play freight train and I'm gonna play it in the style of cotton picking style. | |
| That's for two fingers. | |
| Live from New York, it's Get Off My Lot with Kevin McKinnon. | |
| It's a right time to stop, and I'm going to play this in cotton picking style. | |
| Free train, free train. | |
| Jesus in my grave, yeah. | |
| I crave a stone at my head. | |
| That means tell them all that I'm gone to sleep. | |
| That's Elizabeth Cotton, also known as Libba Cotton. | |
| Born 1893, died in 1987. | |
| Underrated, fascinating old lady. | |
| She was born. | |
| Where was she born? | |
| Look up where she was born. | |
| Probably Louisiana, some such thing. | |
| She always wanted a guitar, and her mama bought her one. | |
| She was a house servant, a maid. | |
| And her mama bought her one from Sears, Sears Roebuck, $13, equivalent of about $113 today. | |
| Where's she from now? | |
| Chapel Hill. | |
| Chapel Hill, North Carolina. | |
| Which would later be incorporated into Carboro. | |
| Okay. | |
| So the thing about Libba is, she got this guitar. | |
| It's a right-handed guitar. | |
| She's left-handed. | |
| She do everything with the left-hand. | |
| So she flip it upside down. | |
| She started playing it upside down. | |
| Now, she practiced originally with a banjo. | |
| The banjo, the top string is a kind of a crazy string. | |
| You can't use it as no bass. | |
| So she got to work around that. | |
| So when she bring it to the guitar, she started doing this thing where she does, well, she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with a thumb. | |
| Her signature alternating bass style has become known as cotton picking. | |
| And she just plucked away. | |
| She reminds me of that Scottish motherfucker, Burt Janch. | |
| You know who named her Elizabeth? | |
| Whom did? | |
| She did it. | |
| First day of school. | |
| What's your name, girl? | |
| I don't know. | |
| How about Elizabeth? | |
| She'd made it. | |
| Her mama never named her. | |
| Mama called her little sis. | |
| She was the youngest. | |
| So she just said, how about Elizabeth? | |
| Then one of the kids she worked for when she's old as hell, Libba, called her Libba. | |
| Couldn't say Elizabeth. | |
| So then she goes, I like that name. | |
| I'm Libba now. | |
| Known as Libba. | |
| She started this music. | |
| The type of music she played became known as Skiffle. | |
| Real big in the 50s in England. | |
| So over there, some motherfucker take it. | |
| And Nancy Whiskey is her name. | |
| She just stole the song. | |
| Libba wrote that song from scratch. | |
| You heard? | |
| Yes, I did. | |
| Oh, it's Libba. | |
| Oh, howdy do. | |
| Libba, now I'm understanding that freight train, you wrote that, you know, because you heard a freight train going by when you were a little girl. | |
| Yes, sir, I did. | |
| And now, now, now, Nancy Whiskey, she done take that song from you. | |
| Oh, that's what they say. | |
| That she go ahead and took my good old fruit pickings from the bottom of the tree limbs. | |
| We got it here, number one, three. | |
| Number one, three, Nancy Whiskey. | |
| No, no, number one, three, you stupid old bitch. | |
| I ain't such for numbers, you see. | |
| Okay, well, learn to read at least. | |
| Mr. Fancy Soup fucking bitch has a name. | |
| What'd you say to me? | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Want me to get my Switch, girl? | |
| No, please, no. | |
| Oh, they done souped it up. | |
| Freight train, freight train, going so fast. | |
| Freight train, freight train, going so fast. | |
| I don't know what train he's on. | |
| Won't you tell me where he's gone? | |
| I think it's funny how these British people, they think that talking simple is like an affectation and you're trying to be simplified. | |
| But Libba, you were just speaking how you spoke. | |
| Yeah, now that I watch this, I am getting kind of pissed off. | |
| Don't worry. | |
| Remember the Seekers? | |