Some people say a man is made outta mud

The two most famous lines in “Sixteen Tons” were family property before they were lyrics. Merle Travis took “you load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt” from a letter his brother John wrote, and “I owe my soul to the company store” from what their father — a Muhlenberg County, Kentucky coal miner — used to answer when neighbours asked how he was doing: “I can’t afford to die.” Travis set it all down in one night in 1946.

Nine years later Tennessee Ernie Ford tucked the song onto the B-side of a Moon Mullican cover, stripped it to finger snaps, a walking bassline and that bottomless baritone, and watched it run to number one on both the pop and country charts. The menace is all in the restraint — no anger, just a man stating the arithmetic of his life.

This clip is from Ford’s own television show in October 1956, a year into the song’s fame. Watch him set the whole thing in motion with a snap of his fingers, cool as you like.