Tennessee Ernie Ford Sixteen Tons

Ernest Jennings Ford (February 13, 1919 October 17, 1991), better known as Tennessee Ernie Ford, was an American recording artist and television host who enjoyed success in the country and Western, pop, and gospel musical genres. Ford scored an unexpected hit on the pop charts in 1955 with his rendition of Merle Travis Sixteen Tons, a sparsely arranged coalminer s lament that Travis wrote in 1946, based on his own family s experience in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Its fatalistic tone contrasted vividly with the sugary pop ballads and the rock and roll just starting to dominate the charts at the time: 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 With a unique clarinetdriven pop arrangement by Ford s musical director, Jack Fascinato, Sixteen Tons spent ten weeks at number one on the country cha