Music & Sound

Tons and tons of 16 Tons (and tons of updates)

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Sunday 9th December 2007

Back in the Pleistocene Age, when I was 4 years old and listening to popular radio, Tennessee Ernie Ford – a country singer with the deepest baritone voice y’all ever heard – had multiple hit records, and was a constant presence on TV (which was all black and white then; can you believe it?).

His most memorable record for me – a number one hit – was a song about the hard life of a coal miner, “Sixteen Tons.”

I used to walk around the apartment wailing about 16 tons, not having the faintest idea of what I was singing (and driving my mother crazy), but it was a catchy tune, with a funky, low-key arrangement not unlike Peggy Lee’s Fever. (RIP Little Wille John)

Many years later, when my pockets burned with advertising loot, I picked up a reissue of Ford’s tune on one of my Saturday morning digging expeditions. To my pleasant surprise, I still liked the song, and I started playing it as an end-of-the-night record at parties I DJ’ed in Brooklyn in the 80′s.

For whatever random reason, I thought of the song the other day, and wanted to hear it. My heart sank at the thought of spending at least a half hour digging through the dozen shelves/piles/crates where my copy might be, so I turned to the internet for a quick fix.

Well, I found it. You can give a listen below. (All the MP3′s are stacked up at the very end of the post, after the videos) During the search, though, I was amazed to realize how many other people had covered the tune. What an interesting set of interpretations. I’m throwing everything I found at you, which may be a few more tons than you can stand; in Jackie Mason’s words: “Why should I care? I got my own problems.” But if you can hang, you might enjoy a few of these.

For starters, I found that the Main Street Saints had knocked down, stomped on, and beaten the living crap out of the song, full-frontal style.

Dig this fine heavy psych treatment by Freeman Sounds & Friends, apparently from Northeast Ohio back in the early 70′s.

Main man Johnny Cash (a younger, crazier Johnny Cash) did a nice treatment, bending the hook around a bit and improving it (in my opinion).

Obviously choosing their tunes with an eye towards what was selling at the time, The Platters set out to out-bass Ford’s baritone. They give him a run for his money.

In a contemporary, your-aunt-would-like-this-it’s-safe-and-commercial kind of way, Rockapella does a version for the suburbs.

Not to be outdone by the smoothness of Ford or the higher profile Cash, Johnny Carroll gives it up for the rockabilly contingent.

The Redskins, 1980′s British left-wingers, do a straight ahead version for the working persons.

All the way live from NYC’s Mercury Lounge, singer/composer Stan Ridgway plays and hollers.

Frankly, I have some doubts about this last version; the group’s called Heavy Balloon (not Led Zeppelin, get it?), and their album is called 32,000 Pounds (16 tons, get it?). A search will turn up many descriptions of the album as a psych rarity of finely crafted stuff from 1969. Maybe I got spoofed by a different version masquerading as theirs, or maybe my arteriosclerotic ears just ain’t feelin’ it, but this take on the song strikes me as acid casualty, and not much else. You be the judge.

And by the way – I lived in a depressed, rural area of West Virginia for a while back in the 70′s. Damn near the only way to make a living and support a family was to work in a deep coal mine. There was a mine entrance not too far from where I lived; miners parked in a lot at the top of the shaft, then traveled in an elevator straight down for an hour-and-a-half to get to where they worked. Respect.

Several tons of update:

Johan kindly points out that Jose Guardiola performs the song (smoove!) in Spanish, apparently in the late 60′s.