Talk:Sixteen Tons

Would it be better if every page about song has a "Lyrics" section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:4B00:9DB9:3B00:9C6A:8ACF:3265:72F0 (talk) 00:38, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Genre
The genre of the song isn't specifically listed. Clearly, it charted as country, and was written by a country musician, but Ford's popular version seems to be jazz. Rag rhythm, brass hits, standing bass, etc. Amazon.com, in fact, lists Ford's Sixteen Tons MP3 under the genre of jazz, and I found several jazz websites that include it. Does anyone know of an expert analysis that talks about the genre? Since it's something of an unusual crossover, I think the genre is noteworthy. Verminjerky (talk) 13:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I will be consulting the National Archives. My initial thoughts is that this is a country song done in the style of the old African American Protest Songs. Being that Ford and Travis were both Caucasian I am leaning toward country. I consider Tennessee Ernie Ford as a popular singer that sang country and gospel. Toby

How many copies sold and when?
"On October 17, it was released and, by October 28, it sold 400,000 copies. On November 10, a million copies had been sold. The record has sold 2,000,000 copies on December 15."

I think this is worded a little screwy. Is the intent to show how quickly the song sold in 1955? If that's the case, I think the last sentence should say "The record sold 2,000,000... copies by December 15." (rather that "has sold ... on ...").

But if the intent is to show the staying power &mdash; how many records have been sold since it was released &mdash; then the sentence should be qualified with a year; something like "Through 2005, the record has sold 2,000,000...".

I'm not qualified to make a correction. (I'm not that bold.) But could somebody look into what is really meant by that paragraph? Joe 13:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

What the ?
This song wasn't about coalminers!!! It was about African slaves in America!!! Could somebody please change this article so that it makes more sense? -- 9:30, 7 August 2008 User:Carrot11


 * Then why does it mention coal (not cotton), and the company store? AnonMoos (talk) 07:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * User:Carrot11 is not swift. Also, what's with the Soviet parody? The Soviets had a lot of nonsense propaganda; do we really need to help spread it around? 74.212.27.206 (talk) 05:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You didn't grow up in a Coal Camp, did you? Al Shumate (talk) 18:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Actually, this song WAS about coal mining - a gentleman working in a mine in Illinois made the statement "You load 16 tons and what do you get? Just another day older and deeper in debt." The friend was a friend of the author and sent the words to him. Which, as someone else suggested, is why it talks about owing the Company Store. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gisela Brandy (talk • contribs) 06:16, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Censorship in the USSR?
Did anybody ever get arrested for singing the wrong version of this song? Why would people fly east to bomb Moscow, anyway? Was this an anti-Moscow song? And which city would they have been taking off from? 216.99.219.244 (talk) 22:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Secret message when played backwards?
Is there any speed where playing the vinyl record backward will reveal a secret message? 216.99.219.244 (talk) 22:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


 * 1955 precedes by over 10 years most of the "backwards masking" and "Paul is dead" controversies. Do you have any verifiable specific information? AnonMoos (talk) 08:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sixteen Tons

There is a version in Esperanto of this song

Olivier Tzaut.- Tra l'mondo - 8  Dek ses tunojn

Pete Seeger made a similar song

Pete Seeger, Gazette Vol. I 42 Kids

I don´t know how to put in this information on the main page, so please help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.188.234.176 (talk) 21:40, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I will be glad to enter the information for you. My thought is to divide this into two sections. One for notable performances and one for notable recordings. Toby

Lead
"On October 17, it was released and, by October 28, it sold 400,000 copies. On November 10, a million copies had been sold. The record had sold two million copies by December 15."

Where, when, and which version? Kafka Liz (talk) 22:56, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Controversy
There is a recording of a performance of Sixteen Tons by Merle Travis before a live audience. At the beginning of this track, he rambles a bit about how he hated this song from the time he wrote it until the Tennessee Ernie Ford version sold 2 million copies, then Merle LOVED it! That strongly implies that Merle collected royalties on those sales. He also mentions that his father was a coal miner, and that a miner could load 16 tons of coal on a good day.

You can hear this track on last.fm : just set it up to "play Merle Travis radio" and wait for it to come around. Curiously, this is NOT the track you can play on demand (http://www.last.fm/music/Merle+Travis/_/Sixteen+Tons) or buy from Amazon!

I'm not putting any more time in on this. Perhaps someone else can track down that recording.

RickJS (talk) 04:53, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

What about 1965 remake by Ernie?
Late cut from Ernie inna "GoGo" style. Capitol #5425 'Sixteen Tons' (2'23") / 'Hicktown' (2'50") LeshaOgonkov (talk) 07:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What, pray tell, is a "GoGo" style? Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The Platters
This article is in Category:The Platters songs" and the section about Russia mentions a version by them, too. Yet there is no other information here or in the article about The Platters. Can someone explain? 80.145.0.190 (talk) 12:48, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

"Authorship"
This section is prominent in the article.

It draws attention to a "claim" by George S. Davis that a song of his from the 1930s was the basis for "Sixteen Tons". It also says that the song is "usually attributed to Merle Travis, to whom it is credited on his 1946 recording": the wording clearly implies that Travis is not the composer.

If that is the case, it would be worth seeing verifying sources. At the moment, the only footnote to this cites a 1966 interview by Davis himself. The only recording by Davis seems to be of "Sixteen Tons", made at the time of the interview and released in 1967, as his 1930s song was apparently unrecorded.

Interesting to see Travis himself quoted here as saying, "I stole pieces of two Josh White songs and wrote Sixteen Tons". That might be worth following up too. Lyn50 (talk) 09:47, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

What is the significance of 16 tons?
In the final episode of Quantum Leap the plot line featured miners trapped in a coal mine. In once scene, an old man was complaining about his arthritis, exclaiming "I mined sixteen tons today. My grandmother could haul sixteen tons." Before that, sixteen tons seemed like a lot of coal to me. Does anyone know what the minimum tonnage was that a miner would need to haul out of the mine in order to pay for his living expenses, the break-even point?

I actually wondered about that, if it was supposed to be a "tall tale" number or not, but I was reading a very technical book about the development of steam locomotives, and it mentions that that mechanical stoker was invented because the accepted limit for a single fireman shoveling coal manually was 4,000-5,000lbs of coal per hour. Hard work, right? (I've seen that basic number in a number of other places as well). Haven't done the math yet to see how that breaks down by shovels per minute, but clearly it works out to 2 tons an hour minimum, or 16 tons per 8-hour shift. That may be the basis of "16 tons". Of course, these are firemen, not miners, but all he says is he "loaded 16 tons of number nine coal", not that he mined it. Even if he was, I believe that shifts were usually longer than 8 hours back then, so if a guy can shovel 16 tons of coal in eight hours, who knows how much he can mine. In any case, it's not an absurd number..45Colt 01:42, 10 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by .45Colt (talk • contribs)

My guess is that 16 tons would be a daily quota. While 16 tons can be shoveled in a day, mining is more labor intensive. I would be glad to receive any sources to help my research. Toby

16 Tonedelas
Heineken is using a version of a spanish language song called "16 tonedelas", apparently a samba-rock something, in their new advertising campaign. Not sure if it's the 1968 version, but I believe the credited name was a newer artist. Someone should add a bit about the song, which is featured in their "legendary (blank)" commercial. It's clearly based on this song. — Preceding unsigned comment added by .45Colt (talk • contribs) 01:19, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Debt bondage
Anyone who has a debt to a retailer can be said to "owe my soul to the company store". This is nothing to do with either the truck system or to debt bondage - which did not exist in the USA at this time.Royalcourtier (talk) 02:37, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The company store is not any retailer, its one owned by the coal company. Maybe the only grocery store in the small remote town... glad to extend some credit to get you in a situation where you effectively can't quite your job... what're you gonna do? And that's not even considering situations where miners were flat-out paid in company scrip, redeemable only at the company store. Herostratus (talk) 18:34, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. Steve Pastor (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Editing for tech ed class
(IN USE) I will be editing this page for my technical editing class. Please refrain from making changes on the title page for two weeks (starting 4.18.15). Any suggesttions comments or hints will be greatly appreciated. (Bowenta (talk) 16:00, 18 April 2015 (UTC) Toby
 * No, sorry, we can't prevent other editors from making changes and actually have no mechanism to do so (except in exceptional circumstances). If you're intending an extensive rewrite and regular work on the article, you could consider placing an Under construction at the top, though/ Herostratus (talk) 22:10, 18 April 2015 (UTC)


 * You're welcome to edit the article, but remember we are only interested in what is good for the Wikipedia and we don't much care about your personal growth and education. I mean, of course we want you to learn and grow, but not at the expense of our articles. I'm confident that there won't be any conflict between your personal growth and the Wikipedia provided you follow our rules, in particular read WP:RS and make sure your stuff is referenced. For kind of popiular-culture topics like pop songs you are not likely to find truly scholarly references, so there's a little leeway maybe. Ask if you have questions. Or read WP:BOLD, but be aware of WP:BRD. Any questions, message me or just ask here. Cheers and happy Wiki'ing, Herostratus (talk) 22:10, 18 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you mean you personally will be editing the page, that or you are a teacher, and your (technical editing) class will be editing the page as a collection of new users?


 * This page may help: School and university projects in any case.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 22:21, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Monty Python
The 16-ton weight was indeed a recurring "meme" in Monty Python:. . But there is no reason to suppose, as far as I can see, that it was connected in any way to this song. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Add meaning of 16 tons
Should the meaning of 16 tons be added to the page? I read that it was because to initiate miners, they had to haul 16 tons on their first day as opposed to the normal 8 or 10, but I can't find a credible source on it. I read the info on this website, and it cites a book called Only A Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs, which does exist, but I don't have it and can't find it online. Does anyone have the book or can the fact be verified in any other way? ThatGuyDavid09 (talk) 02:07, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * contact them at feedback@songfacts.com They are very cooperative with source info. Tillywilly17 (talk) 03:58, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Other versions, Foreign-language versions and In popular culture sections
They're all ridiculously bloated, currently with around 150 examples, and the majority are obscure and unreferenced. Wikipedia isn't meant to be a wholesale replacement for specialist sites like SecondHandSongs; I suggest most should be added there, if they aren't already, and linked with a simple statement. Vegan4Life (talk) 07:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, but...
OK, so these are reasonable points. The lists are awfully long, could be said to be mostly unref'd, could be said to be mostly trivial, and the solution you suggested could more or less work. But... I'm not seeing any easy solution anyway. So, couple points. Re "Wikipedia isn't meant to be a wholesale replacement for specialist sites like SecondHandSongs", it kind of is. The First Pillar" open with "Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers" (Emphasis added). A number of people don't like that, and even more would like it to say "except pop-culture stuff", but they haven't been able to change it. We are not rule-bound here, but it is a foundational rule and that matters IMO.So then the question is "is SecondHandSongs a specialized encyclopedia". Well, our article Encyclopedia starts with

Sure I know a lot of editors are like "Well but come on shit sites like SecondHandSongs aren't proper encyclopedia. and the founders didn't mean the rule to cover them". IMO that's class snobbery tho and IMO they're probably wrong. I suppose instead we could go with a definition; here's google's first result dictionary:

Which means only specialized encyclopedias that are actual books are meant. But it's 2023 and even Britannica isn't published in print tho, or if it is hella others aren't. So that's pretty constricting, and I doubt the community wold go for that. I'm not seeing any reason to maintain that SecondHandSongs isn't effectively a specialized encyclopedia. Willing to learn different.

As to "unreferenced", I believe that for creative works the work itself is the reference. Like, for the "plot" sections of articles on books and movies, and for other things -- who the author is, or the name of the publisher, or whatnot -- the reader can get the work and see for herself. Same with SecondHandSongs, if the reader wants to verify that "My Thumb Hurts" by Joe Smith is a cover of an original by Bill Jones, she can get ahold of the works and see for herself. As to obscure, mnmh, well I mean yeah but the material is only going to be more obscure if we delete it. The source of "obscure" is "hidden" or "dark" (still used for "obscured"), and isn't our remit to unhide and undarken data, bring it out and organize it where people can access it more easily?

And as to replacing the material with "For more info see SecondHandSongs", well, first of all I'm not sure SecondHandSongs is complete, or easily searchable, or is going to be up forever. But anyway we could replace half our articles with "The info is on the internet, go to this site and that site" but our remit is is to make so people don't have to do that. We do use external links, but mainly for enrichment material: "You want to read a more detailed twelve-page article about the subject that's at deeper level than we do here, go to this site" or "Here's a site with some info that's somewhat related, if you want". But I mean the reader is accessing an article named "Sixteen Tons". Sure some people only need to know who wrote it or whatever, but it's not unreasonable to figure that a non-trivial number of readers want to see about the cover versions (which, after all, a lot of song articles do provide).

And besides all that, the reader might want to know "how enduringly popular is this song", we can't say it is and point to the instances ourselves. Let the reader see how many version and figure out for herself how enduringly popular she thinks it is. Sure we might find a source that says "Hey, this song is enduringly popular" but then we're providing someone's opinion and the reader is left in the dark as to what standard that writer used.

But then...
I mean, common sense comes into play. Our remit is to aid the reader. If the material makes the article objectively worse, IMO that supersedes any rules, we are not (supposed to be) rule-bound here. One could make the point that all this clutters up the important info and makes the article worse. But it's segregated into labeled sections at the end of the article, so the reader can just skip it. But, the material itself is a little overwhelming, even for people that do want to access those sections. So, we could omit all the versions not by notable (=bluelinked) singers, or by foreigners, or that were not singles, or some other rubric. This would improve the experience for readers wanting material that meets the rubric. The problem is, readers come to the article for various reasons. Some do want to see foreign versions, or album tracks, or all published versions, or all versions by black singers (they'd have to do more research for that, but they can begin here) or whatnot. Maybe they're doing a paper on "American Influence on Mid 20th Century Italian Music Culture" or "The Working Class in American Song" or whatever. Any trimming is going to stymie those people. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't trim (a different question than deleting it altogether), but it is something to consider.

So... IMO there's no perfect solution. We could put in subsections, that might help. By decade say. Or something short of deleting all the material, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 17:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)


 * So, somebody (not you) deleted the stuff anyway, in April. It was a pain to put it back, so I'm hardly in a good mood. So why I reverted this is:
 * I don't want to hear how some editor doesn't like it, think it's trivial or boring or whatever. I want to hear how it would serve the reader to remove the material, in this case.
 * The reader, has after all, chosen to access and read an article named "Sixteen Tons". We can presume that reader who reads far into the article is interested in knowing about the song, and not the town of Radford, Illinois or Professor Mark J. Gasiorowski or whatever. Right? Is it not at least possible that some non-trivial percentage of these people are looking for, or anyway would be pleased to be able to find out, the various versions recorded, or some of them. Since it is at least possible, we should err on the side of providing the information, since after all it's already there.
 * As far as sourcing, it's my understanding that works are pretty much their own reference. When, for instance, we include a section "Books written by this person", we don't have to provide a source of some second party indicating "This book does, indeed exist, and was written by this person". If the reader wants to satisfy herself of that, she can look it up herself or go to the library. We can provide links as a courtesy. If it's an episode of a TV show, ditto. So not an existential problem for the material. Herostratus (talk) 21:37, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

wp"songcover
Almost all of these obviously don't meet the criteria. I'll gradually start to remove to give people the chance to object to indicidual removals. Or provide evidence that songcover is met. 203.13.3.94 (talk) 03:51, 6 March 2024 (UTC)