Sixteen Tons

DESCRIPTION: "Now some folks say a man is made out of mud, But a poor man's made out of muscle and blood." The singer describes the hard life in the mines -- and the debts incurred. "St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."
AUTHOR: Merle Travis
EARLIEST DATE: 1946 (recorded by author)
KEYWORDS: work hardtimes poverty mining
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 154, "Sixteen Tons" (1 text, 1 tune)
Green-OnlyAMiner-RecordedCoalMiningSongs, p. 279-281, "Two by Travis": p. 295, "Sixteen Tons"(1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TON16
Roud #15162
RECORDINGS:
George Davis, "Sixteen Tons" (on GeorgeDavis01)
Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons" (Capitol 3262, 1955)
B. B. King, "Sixteen Tons" (RPM 451, n.d.)
Merle Travis, "Sixteen Tons" (Capitol 48001, 1947; on 78 album "Folk Songs of the Hills", Capitol AD 50; rec. 1946)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "'31 Depression Blues" (lyrics)
NOTES [167 words]: According to James Sullivan, Which Side Are You On?: 20th Century History in 100 Protest Songs, with a foreword by The Reverend Lennox Yearwood and Bill McKibben, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 41, this song "would become a massive, unexpected hit in the hands of country crooner Tennessee Ernie Ford, reaching the top spot on the Billboard pop chart in 1955. The coal industry had long set quotas for miners, which rose dramatically over the years. A miner who was required to extract two tons of coal per day in the 1860s was expected to produce sixteen tons each shift in the 1920s. 'You load sixteen tons, and what do you get / Another day older and deeper in debt,' Travis wrote, crediting the line to his brother John, who worked in the mines. Though a folk songwriter named George S. Davis would claim in the 1960s that he was the song's true author, Travis maintained that it was his father who provided the song's memorably rousing final line: 'I owe my soul to the company store.'" - RBW
File: LoF154

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