Has anybody ever nailed a song like Tennessee Ernie Ford nailed "Sixteen Tons''?
I don't think so. You would have thought he just emerged from a gritty mine with coal rubbings all over his face. That booming baritone did seem to come from someplace deep in the ground.
You load sixteen tons, 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 the company store
America loved it. A lot. No song had risen to the top of the music chart faster than "Sixteen Tons'' which made it on this day in 1955 after just three weeks. It stayed there two months.
Merle Travis had written the song in 1946 and put it on his album "Folk Songs of the Hills.'' Other singers took turns at it, but it was Ford's deep voice -- along with that signature finger snap -- that gave the song its power and cadence. Here's how Ford explained the surprising success of "Sixteen Tons'' in a 1957 Saturday Evening Post interview:
They liked Sixteen Tons, all right, at Capitol, when I brought it over and suggested that they record it, but nobody threw a fit over it. Nobody said, "We're glad you brought this along because it's sure to sell a million copies in twenty-one days.'' Thcy didn't say that because anybody in his right mind knew that wouldn't happen. Yet that's exactly what did happen.
Nobody did it better than Ernie, bless his pea pickin' heart, but it was cool to find an old hayseed clip of Travis picking it, so that's what we're sharing now.
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