"Sixteen Tons" is a song about the life of a coal miner, first recorded in 1946 by American country singer Merle Travis and released on his box set album Folk Songs of the Hills the following year. 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.
Read more about Sixteen Tons: Authorship, Cover Versions, Foreign Language Versions, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words sixteen and/or tons:
“I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“People think that at the top there isn’t much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)