Sixteen Tons Performed by Richie Milton

Heres the East London singer songwriter bluesman bandleader Richie Milton band leader to “The Lowdown“ “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 the United Kingdom, where it gave Ford’s version competition While the song is usually attributed to Merle Travis, to whom it is credited on his 1947 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.[1] Davis’ recording of his version of the song appears on the albums George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Union Men[2] and Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian.[