The Growth of the Model Community
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store.
A THOUSAND times a day. U.S. jukeboxes moaned out Sixteen Tons, a Tin Pan Alley folk song about a coal miner who is soul-deep in debt to his employer. The song landed with a sixteen-ton impact because of its tootling orchestration and Tennessee Ernie Ford's richly lugubrious style. To the jukebox generation the words were all but meaningless. Yet, as late as the 1920s, the ballad's bitter plaint was a real-life...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
