A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - PLEDGE WEEK: “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

Welcome to the seventh and final in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . I’m glad to say that this pledge week has been successful enough that I may do another of these in a year or so. This one is about “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a record that was a huge influence on many, many artists in the mid fifties. (more…)

This is not a proper episode of the podcast. Rather, this is something else. I've decided to hold a pledge week to try to get a few more subscribers to my Patreon. So every day this week, I'll be putting one of the backer-only episodes I've done over the past year up on the main podcast feed, so people can hear what it is you get

if you sign up for the Patreon, with this little introductory piece before them. If you're already a backer, you will already have this episode, so you can skip this, and everything else labeled Pledge Week. I do one of these every week for my backers, and backers even at the lowest levels get them.

If you sign up for a dollar a month, you get each new one as it comes out, and access to all the old ones. There are 59 of them up so far, as well as a few other things, like the monthly Q&As I've been doing for backers. I'm only making seven of these available on the public feed, so there's a lot still there for you to listen to.

If this works well, I might do another one next year, where there'll be another 50-odd episodes to choose from. None of this is meant to put any pressure on anyone who can't afford it to back the podcast. The podcast will always remain free to listen to, and I hope it will remain ad-free as well. I know times are especially tough right now, and many of you literally can't afford the money you're already spending, let alone paying any more out.

I only want backers who can spare the money. But if you can afford it, and if you like these bonus episodes enough, then go to patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey, that's spelled H-I-C-K-E-Y, or follow the link in the show notes, and sign up, and you'll get one of these the same day as every new episode. If you can't, well, enjoy this extra free bonus, and don't worry about it. As we're reaching the end of 1956, and are also now on the 50th episode of the podcast.

I thought it worthwhile trying to fill in a few gaps in the year we've been covering. And one of those gaps is the song 16 tonnes. We've mentioned this song a couple of times before. We talked during the episode on Bo Diddley about how much he liked the song, and it also came up in the episode on Johnny Cash. But because it's not actually a rock and roll song as Suss, such, we never looked at it in any more detail. But it's a song that was a huge hit in 1956,

and which influenced many rock and rollers, and so we should probably have a quick look at its history. People say a man is made out of mud, a poor man's made out of muscle and blood, muscle and blood and skin and bones, mine that's weak and a back that's strong, you load 16 tons, That's the version of the song that became a hit by the city older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter, don't you call me because I can go. I owe my soul to the company store. That's the version of the song that became a hit in 1956 by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but it's not the original version of the song. The song was written by Merle Travis, one of the greatest country guitarists of all time. Merle Travis is credited with the invention of Travis picking, a type of guitar playing where you play a bass line on the bottom two strings of the guitar while you play melody on the top two with the melody syncopated, as in ragtime. It's a particular pattern that can be heard in everything from The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel to Just Threat by Pearl Jam. Travis's own playing was more complicated than the kind of music that now gets to.

called Travis Picking, as you can hear on, say, Cannonball Rag. That owes a lot to ragtime and blues, not just to country music. While Travis is credited as the inventor of this style, he wasn't actually its originator. It was actually invented by a black blues guitarist called Arnold Schultz, who lived in Travis's home state of Kentucky. Schultz never made a record, but he taught the style to several other guitarists, including one called Kennedy Jones, who in turn taught it to many other guitarists, including Ike Averley, who will be hearing more about in the second year of the main podcast. Travis spent the early part of his career as a fairly conventional country singer. He started off as one of the very first artists on Sid Nathan's King Records, before King made its turn

to the R&B for which it became better known. But then, in 1946, he signed to Capital Records, where he made country pop records like Divorce Me, COD. He bought me a great long ticket, I'm going to use it at 4pm, so you can call your secret love and tell the news to him. You thought your little romance was on the strict QT, so if you want your freedom, PDQ, But then Travis made an album called Folk Songs of the Hills,

which was very different from anything else he'd recorded before. This was before the long-playing vinyl record, and so it was a box of four singles, all of which consisted just of Travis singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment. The songs were a mixture of the traditional folk songs that the title led you to expect When John Hinnney was a little bitty boy No bigger than the palm of your hand

His mamie, she looked down at Johnny said My Johnny gonna be a steel driving man, Lord Lord Johnny going to be a steel driving man When John Hinnie was a little bit boy Sitting on his mammy's knee Well, he picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel And said this hammer going to be the death of Lord. A new songs written by Travis himself,

Mostly about the culture of the mining areas of Kentucky where he grew up. And 16 tons was one of those. In its original version, it started with a spoken introduction explaining the concept of company script, where someone could work for a company and be paid, not in cash that could be spent anywhere, but in tokens that could only be exchanged for goods sold by the company they worked for.

This was an unfortunately common practice in the early and mid-20th century, and those of you who've been following developments in cryptocurrencies and the big tech companies know that it's making a return at the moment. So they add that against his account. And every day he gets a little farther in debt. That sounds pretty bad, but even that's got a brighter side to it. Now some people say a man's made out of mud,

but a pole man's made out of muscle and blood, a muscle and blood, skin and bones, a mind that's weak and a back that's strong. You load 16 tons. And what do you get another day older and deeper in death? St. Peter, don't you call me, cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company, Travis's recording was not particularly successful, and he went back to recording the honky-tonk country records that he was successful with, but his career started to fade in the 50s.

Until his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford, who had become nationally known, thanks to some appearances on I Love Lucy, decided he wanted to record a new version of 16 tons in 1956, a decade after. to Travis's original version. Ford's version is very, very different from Travis's original. It cuts out the spoken explanation, and where Travis's version is a ragtime-influenced guitar track, forwards is taken at a much lower pitch, and it is dominated by clarinet and finger snaps. It's quite an astonishing arrangement,

although it was soon imitated by all sorts of people, not least Peggy Lee in her version of fever. If you see me coming better, step aside. A lot of men didn't, a lot of men died, one fist of iron, the other of steel, if the right one don't get you, then the left one will you load 16 tonne, what do you get another day older and deeper in debt?

St. Peter, don't you call me, because I can go. Ford's recording became an instant classic, inspiring everyone from Johnny Cash to Bo Didley to Tom Wait. It's a perfect marriage of song, arrangement and vocalist, and one of those records that perfectly encapsulates its time. It also revived the career of Merle Travis, who had stopped having any commercial success with his electric recordings, despite being a musician's musician who every single other guitarist in the business looked up to.

Suddenly, people started to re-evaluate Travis' work, and he became an integral part of the new folk music movement. Travis continued playing the electric guitar, but he started recording solo albums of electric guitar performances of traditional songs. and became known as one of the great exponents of country guitar, as well as one of the great songwriters, with his dark as a dungeon in particular, another song from Folk Songs of the Hills,

becoming a country standard. Tennessee Ernie Ford, meanwhile, went on to a career as a presenter of TV variety shows, and while he continued making records, none of them had the success, either artistically or commercially, have 16 tons. But you only need to make

one classic like that per career for your career to be worthwhile.