Thanks for this! Elizabeth Cotten is yet another blues great that I had never heard before.
About halfway through the first song, the camera zoomed in, and I noticed that her guitar is strung upside down, with the bass strings on the bottom. I guess there’s more than a few southpaws who learned that way. Made me want to check her entry on Wikipedia:
Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (née Nevills; January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987)[1][2][3] was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down.[4] This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as “Cotten picking”.[5]
I’m not surprised you’d appreciate her talent and her performance. While Led Zeppelin was undoubtedly one of the most talented and influential rock groups of all time, they obviously borrowed much of their catalog from the work of earlier, less well-known artists, many of whom received little recognition for their talent and even less financial reward. The female musicians, in particular, from whom Led Zeppelin borrowed (e.g., Anne Bredon, Memphis Minnie, etc.), never received the credit they deserve for pioneering the blues, folk, and rock styles, and often received no royalties for their music when performed by more famous rock musicians.
Yeah, Led Zep was definitely a blues band. I know how you feel about hearing too much of a particular band. One of my freshman roommates (in a horribly-mismatched room full of them) played Fleetwood Mac 24/7, very loudly. To this day, I can’t enjoy listening to them.
Anne Bredon is another one I did not know about, and I have been playing my rather poor version of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You since I was in high school! Glad to hear that Zep eventually paid royalties on the composition.
Joan Baez – "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" (1962)
I did not even know about the Joan Baez version that inspired Led Zeppelin, and I own the album Joan Baez in Concert where it appears. In all fairness to me, however, her version is quite different from the one Led Zeppelin came up with. It does have it's charms, though.
Im kinda all over the place musically.
I tend to lean toward the heavier side, but mostly I just really love musical and instrumental proficiency almost regardless of genre.
Me too. Musically, I am both gourmet and gourmand.
Once time, a friend explained that I'm a musical slut! When I frowned, he said, "Yeah. You just like it all!." And that's kinda true. Most of the time, I pose as some sort of self-styled musical elitist, but occasionally I get exposed, when I fall in love with the latest cheesy pop tune.
It took me many years to admit that cheesy pop can be great.