Elizabeth Cotten wrote ‘Freight Train in 1904 when she only 11 years old. It became a staple of the finger-style guitar repertoire over the intervening years. It is a perfect piece of music to learn finger-style guitar as it has a catchy well defined melody. The free guitar tab below shows the has a 16 bar blues structure of the song. With Freight Train you can learn to play a melody against a bassline. Then learn to syncopate the melody against the bassline. You can play the melody in the bass, and lastly learn some chord substitutions.
Freight Train became a hit for Nancey Whiskey during the UK skiffle craze, though this wasn’t credited to Elizabeth Cotten. The Quarrymen also performed the song in the late 1950’s, with Paul McCartney again playing it live in the 1990s. You can watch Elizabeth Cotton herself play the song here.
I’ve played through 4 approaches of the song in the video below. On the first pass, the melody os played in straight time with an alternating bass line. Here the melody is played on the beat. Second time through I add some syncopation in the melody and vary the bass line. Syncopation just means some of the melody notes are moved from on the beat to in between the beats. On the third pass I added some chord substitutions, and on the final time ,the melody is played in the bass with accompaniment in the treble strings. All of these approaches are shown in the free guitar tab below.
Many instrumentals start out life as songs, and its a good idea to listen to the song itself to get a proper feel for the piece. You can watch Elizabeth Cotton play it below…She was a self taught banjo and guitar player who learned to play left handed on right handed instruments, so just flipped the instruments upside down!