Coal Mining Top Ten: Sixteen Tons (#5)

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It's Monday, and that means back to work (or something that impersonates work). And, for me, it's back to the list of favorites that have to do with coal mining. Here's probably the most blatantly obvious song on the list, and one that "everybody" knows. #5: Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford Special, special, waddaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt! ("Special" by the Violent Femmes) Yeah, this song is in the American consciousness. Merle Travis, the song's author, will show up on his own soon enough. He wrote this song based on his relatives' lives in the western Kentucky coal mines. His dad was fond of saying, "I'm too poor to die. I owe my soul to the company store." Travis explained in the spoken introduction on Folk Songs of the Hills that coal mine companies owned everything back then (there's a replica of a mining town in Stearns, Kentucky [owned by the Stearns Coal Company] that I hope to visit this summer): the mine, the town, the camp the miners lived in, and the store. As there was little to no transportation then, everything was in-town. The miners would buy things at the company-owned general store, and the charges were put on his account. Or, he'd get paid in "scrip," which was only good at that coal company's store. Owed his soul to the company store, indeed. As for Tennessee Ernie, here's an interesting bit of trivia for you: as a young man he worked as at DJ in Knoxville, Tennessee (I think it was WROL he worked on, but don't quote me on that...it's early ). He was the one who announced to that corner of the world the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sixteen Tons Written by Merle Travis Recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford Released as a single, 1955 From Homer & Jethro's version: "Tennessee Ernie done made this song, but the pea-pickers sung the words all wrong":