Town of Carrboro holds celebration for local folk-music legend Elizabeth Cotten

Musician, family-centric and Carrboro native are all things that encompass the character of Elizabeth Cotten. The Grammy Award-winning artist was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. To commemorate Cotten’s lasting legacy, on Sunday the Town of Carrboro held the Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten Day Celebration at the Carrboro Century Center.

Cotten was born on Jan. 5, 1893 — hence the significance of the day of celebration — in Carrboro, North Carolina. In years past, the Town has organized ceremonies at the intersection of East Main Street and Roberson Street, where the Elizabeth Cotten historical marker stands, but this year they felt they needed to do something different.

“I really felt like we weren’t clicking on all cylinders as it relates to celebrating Elizabeth Cotten the woman,” Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee said.

To shift the celebration to focus more on Cotten as a person, this year the Town invited members of her family to the event and spent time reflecting on the life she led.

Around 1 p.m., members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community began flooding into Century Hall, many of whom had seen Cotten perform and others who simply wanted to learn more about the Carrboro icon.

The event began with Foushee introducing the event, clearly delighted by what was soon to unfold in the next few hours. Following her comments and the reading of a proclamation regarding Cotten’s life, Foushee introduced the members of Cotten’s family who were present, one of whom being her great-granddaughter Brenda Evans.

Evans was raised by her great-grandmother, who she refers to as “Granny.” She grew up listening to Cotten perform and even sang with her on tour at  11 years old. 

Evans loved to sing, but she did not necessarily want to sing folk music, which was her great-grandmother’s specialty. However, Cotten saw the passion Evans had for the art and invited her to join her at various shows, building their relationship and Evans’ joy for singing.

“It’s more like I inherited the love of music [from her] than was inspired by it,” she said.

Evans takes a primary role in honoring her great-grandmother’s legacy. To continue to appreciate Cotten’s contributions to the musical world, Evans and other members of Cotten’s family — including three of her great-great-grandsons Jordan, Jared and John Evans and their children — performed one of her most famous songs, “Shake Sugaree.”

As the family began to play, the crowd was enraptured by the mellow acoustics of the guitar played by Jordan and Jared and the moving lyricism of Cotten sung by each member of her family. Evans invited the audience to join in, and after each verse, the room filled with the voices of the crowd repeating the chorus, “Everything I’ve got is done and pawned.”

After this performance, Jared and Brenda Evans joined together to sing another of Cotten’s songs, “Freight Train,” which focuses on themes of death and the afterlife. The song — which she wrote at the age of 11 or 12 — was inspired by the North Carolina Railroad section that ran by her home in Carrboro.  

Audience member Silva Stumpf saidshe really resonated with the lyrics and the performance. 

Stumpf has known of Cotten for many years and attended the event after seeing a post about it on social media. The song “Freight Train” is particularly special to Stumpf because of her brother’s death in 2005.

“Freight Train is a song that lives in my heart, and it was a song that he knew,” she said.

After the event, Stumpf remarked that it was very moving, which was a sentiment shared among the individuals present.

Brenda Evans could feel the love for her great-grandmother in the room and was proud to not only have so many community members at the event to celebrate her life, but also other members of her family.

The event concluded with more words from Foushee and a social hour for guests to mingle and speak with members of Cotten’s family.

“Moving forward, I’m going to have to pass the baton,” Evans said of preserving her Granny’s legacy. “And now I know who to pass it to.”

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