A folksinger herself, Laura Veirs has been playing Cotten’s music for many years. “When I became a student of country blues guitar in Seattle in the 1990s, I learned quite a few of her songs in detail,” she explains. “They’re very difficult to play. Even though the basic melody is simple, the accompanying parts on the guitar are very complicated.”

Veirs finds lots of messages in Cotten’s story: the message of never giving up, that most people are capable of doing amazing things, and, most importantly, that “just because something is laying in hiding doesn’t mean it isn’t still there.”