Freight Train (folk song)

Common card · No. 444032

"Freight Train" is an American folk song written by Elizabeth Cotten in the early 20th century, and popularized during the American folk revival and British skiffle period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten's own account in the 1985 BBC series Down Home, she composed "Freight Train" as a teenager (sometime between 1906 and 1912), inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in North Carolina. Cotten was a one-time nanny for folk singer Peggy Seeger, who took this song with her to England, where it became popular in folk music circles. Pseudonymous British songwriters "Paul James" and "Fred Williams" from a British skiffle band subsequently misappropriated it as their own composition and registered a claim of copyright in the song, adding a murderer-on-the-run storyline. Under that credit, it was recorded by British skiffle singer Chas McDevitt, in December, 1956. Under advice from his manager (Bill Varley), McDevitt then brought in folk-singer Nancy Whiskey...

Read on Wikipedia