TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD - “Sixteen Tons”
(20th January 1956)
What makes a hit? Gimmicks, among other things. Pop records have always provided their fair share of ‘water-cooler moments’ - “Have you heard that one?” - and it helps if they have a couple of good lines, or a sound that grabs you, or if their performer gives good visual. If the word ‘gimmick’ is too crass for you, substitute ‘hook’ - but there is a difference. A song with a terrific melody will probably have a great hook, but the average listener might not be able to reproduce the melody. But everyone who heard “Sixteen Tons” could click their fingers, and manage a deep-voiced “company sto-o-o-o-o-ow”, and repeat a couple of the song’s many great lines. The main musical hook - that rueful, shoulder-shrugging horn line that kicks things off - is also a marvel, but “Sixteen Tons” is a record stuffed with gimmicks.
It’s also absolutely distinct in mood from anything to hit No.1 before it. There’s humour, but it’s desperately black. The record appeals to the audience for sparse Americana, but “Sixteen Tons” has none of rock and roll’s vigour; its overall mood is a sort of nihilistic swagger. The singer was born working, he will die working, and even when he dies his soul will keep on working, and with his fists of metal he’s almost a machine himself. His hints of bad-boy toughness are matched by an acknowledgement of the price that toughness comes at. I don’t always demand depth from pop music - too often shooting for depth means botching the breezier things that pop does better than any other art - but “Sixteen Tons” achieves it (and something just as rare, mystery) while staying pop to the core: catchy, idea-filled, instantly memorable. 9
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Lena on October 30th, 2006
Oh my God, no one else has commented on this yet!?! I know it’s a long stretch - the longest - to connect this to punk rock, but ‘nihilistic swagger’ sounds awfully close to me. Doesn’t he talk about how he killed a man because he didn’t get out of his way? (can’t remember the lyrics ugh)…
FT's Alan on October 30th, 2006
FT historical note for Lena. When Popular started it used the free Haloscan comments system which only held so many and then expired older comments to be lost to the ether forever. Entirely because precious Popular conversations were evaporating, FT moved to permanent Blogger comments sometime before Tom got to the 60s #1s. (What Haloscan comments were left were pasted in to Blogger comments).
All Blogger comments (minus an immense amount of spam!) were moved over to WP this summer gone.
Lena on October 30th, 2006
Ah, well that explains things…thanks Alan!
Doctor Casino on August 19th, 2007
For all I know, the lost comments would cover this point better than I can ever hope to - but I press on!
I like the song, although I’m only really familiar with it through Nilsson’s jaunty late-60s recording of it. Tom, I agree that the content of the lyric is fabulous stuff, and really quite provocative for 1956 (although this was a generation that had survived the Depression - perhaps certain things were less shocking then than I would expect).
But…. the performance is a mismatch. The clarinet tag is a hook but it’s a dinky, tidy hook; the bigger problem is Ford himself, who takes the swagger into a territory too oily to sell the blues his song is describing. You believe that he’s maybe seen hard times in Prohibition raids - but loading tonnage, not so much. Even the elfin Nilsson managed to make a more cohesive package out of this, IMO.
The ‘plong, plonnnnng’ tones that show up late in the track are a stroke of genius, though. With the shuffle of the percussion they almost evoke a train’s horn, but they are vague and untraceable, the one bit of ghostly Western weirdness that the song needs so much more of.