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"Sixteen Tons" is a song about a coal miner, based on life in coal mines in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.〔http://www.ernieford.com/SIXTEENTONS.html retrieved 5.6.2015〕 It was written and first recorded by Merle Travis at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California on August 8, 1946. Cliffie Stone played bass on the recording.〔http://countrydiscography.blogspot.com/2010/03/merle-travis.html Prague Frank's Country Music Discographies. retrieved 5.6.2015〕 It was first released by Capitol on the album ''Folk Songs of the Hills'' (July 1947). The song became a gold record. The line, "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt," came from a letter written by Travis' brother John.〔 Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say, "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store." A 1955 version recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford reached number one in the ''Billboard'' charts,〔 while another version by Frankie Laine was released only in Western Europe, where it gave Ford's version competition. On March 25, 2015 it was announced that Ford's version of the song will be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. ==Authorship== While the song is usually attributed to Merle Travis,〔 to whom it is credited on his 1946 recording, George S. Davis, a folk singer and songwriter who had been a Kentucky coal miner, claimed on a 1966 recording for Folkways Records to have written the song as "Nine-to-ten tons" in the 1930s.〔John Cohen, liner notes to the album ''George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Mining Men'' (Folkways FA 2343, 1967).〕 Davis' recording of his version of the song appears on the albums ''George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Union Men''〔Folkways FA 2343, 1967〕 and ''Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian''.〔Folkways Recordings ASIN B000S9DIHK, 2002〕 According to Travis, the line from the chorus, "another day older and deeper in debt", was a phrase often used by his father, a coal miner himself. This and the line, "I owe my soul to the company store", is a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers which could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sixteen Tons」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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