- Sixteen Tons
"Sixteen Tons" is a song about the misery of
coal mining , first recorded in1946 by U.S. country singerMerle Travis and released on his box set album "Folk Songs of the Hills " the following year. A1955 version recorded by 'Tennessee' Ernie Ford was on theb-side of his cover of theMoon Mullican standard, "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry ". However, it was Ford's "Sixteen Tons" that reached number one in the Billboard charts, besting the performance of the competing version byJohnny Desmond . Another competing version byFrankie Laine was released only in theU.K. where it gave Ford's version some stiff competition on the charts. OnOctober 17 , it was released and, byOctober 28 , it sold 400,000 copies. OnNovember 10 , a million copies had been sold. The record had sold two million copies byDecember 15 .The well-known chorus runs::You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?:Another day older and deeper in debt.:
Saint Peter , don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;:I owe my soul to thecompany store ...According to Travis, the line from the chorus "another day older and deeper in debt" was a phrase often used by his father, a coalminer himself.Fact|date=June 2007
This and the line "I owe my soul to the
company store " is a reference to thetruck system and todebt bondage . Under this system workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with unexchangeable credit vouchers for goods at the company store (usually referred to asscrip ). This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or apartment buildings, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay.In the
U.S. the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly-formedUnited Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.The song has been covered by a wide variety of musicians. In 1955 it was recorded by
Tennessee Ernie Ford and hitBillboard 'sCountry Music charts in November and held the #1 position for ten weeks, then crossed over and held the #1 position on thepop music charts for eight weeks. [cite book
first=Ace
last= Collins
year= 1996
title= The Stories Behind Country Music's All-time Greatest: 100 Songs
edition=
publisher= The Berkeley Publishing Group
location=New York
pages= pp 91-93
id=ISBN 1-57297-072-3 ] In theUnited Kingdom , Ford's version competed with versions byEdmund Hockridge andFrankie Laine ; for some reason, Laine's version was not released in the United States but only in the UK. Other examples include a rock version released by Eels on their live album "Sixteen Tons (10 Songs)" (2005 ), a country version released byJohnny Cash on his album "Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town" (1987 ), a version with a rock edge by Tom Jones that became a hit in 1967, a blues-rock version recorded in 1972 by CCS, a slow, jazzy version released byStan Ridgway on the album Anatomy (1999 ), a cumbia version by nuclear polka bandBrave Combo , and a traditional roots country version released byCorb Lund on the album Modern Pain (1995 ). A folk-punk version was also performed byThis Bike is a Pipe Bomb . Swedish doom metal band Memento Mori recorded a version of this song as a hidden track on their 1993 debut albumRhymes of Lunacy . The song can be found if the listener allows the CD to remain playing several minutes after the final listed song ends. Serbian hard rock bandRiblja Čorba recorded a cover version called "16 noći" (Trans. "16 nights"), which appeared on their 1999 album "Nojeva barka ". It was also featured as a secret track on progressive thrash metal bandConfessor 's 1991 release,Condemned .The 1990 rendition of the song by
Eric Burdon was used for the memorable opening to the comedy "Joe Versus the Volcano ". The song is also sung in the undersea horror movie "Leviathan ".Presidential candidate
Dennis Kucinich 's rendition of the song onJanuary 8 ,2007 received fairly widespread media play on a variety of television stations and on the popular websiteYouTube .In
Russia ,Moscow 's venue [http://www.16tons.ru/ "Sixteen Tons"] is named after the song by Merle Travis. "Sixteen Tons" track is a house song and can be heard before each concert held in the club.In Russia this song has been famous since the
Soviet era, but in thePlatters ' version. The song was so influential, that in theUSSR several cover versions were made in Russian. In one of the Russian versions the words in the chorus were about US plans to attack the USSR with 16 tons bombs::Sixteen tons, the the heavy load:Planes are flying to bomb the Soviet Union:The planes are flying to the East:To bomb a simple Soviet villageA controversy surrounds the authorship of "Sixteen Tons". It is generally attributed to Merle Travis, to whom it is credited on his 1947 recording. However, Kentucky ex-coalminer and singer/songwriter
George S. Davis (1904-1992), when recorded by John Cohen for Folkways in 1966, claimed to have written this song in the 1930s. [John Cohen, liner notes to the album"George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Mining Men" (Folkways FA 2343, 1967)] . Davis' 1966 recording of his version of the song is preserved on the albums "George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Union Men" (Folkways FA 2343, 1967) and "Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian" (Folkways Recordings ASIN B000S9DIHK, 2002).In 2005,
General Electric ran a series of ads for its new "clean coal" campaign featuring the song.References
* "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits" (fifth edition)
* InBrazil , Noriel Vilela recorded a Portuguese version of "Sixteen Tons" with hisLouis Armstrong -like voice and a "Samba " feel.External links
* [http://www.ernieford.com/SixteenTons.htm Sixteen Tons - the history behind the legend]
*"West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly", Volume 15, Nos. 2 and 3, "Coal Miners and Their Communities in Southern Appalachia, 1925-1941" by Rhonda Janney Coleman. :Part 1: http://www.wvculture.org/HiStory/wvhs1502.html:Part 2: http://www.wvculture.org/HiStory/wvhs1503.html
* [http://www.16tons.ru/ Moscow club "Sixteen Tons"]
* [http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=opera&rls=en&q=ge+sexy+miners&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv GE advertizement.]
* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20050519/ai_n14640891 Article describing GE campaign.]
*http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/sixteen2.html Page about 16 Tons, George Davis and the history of the Company Store
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