My grandpa was a coal miner in Pennsylvania. The "company store" reference is because the mine didn't pay wages in cash but in script. Script was only redeemable in the Company Store.
all of the older men in my family were miners. The company store was a place where you were forced to shop, and the prices there were designed to ensure that there was always something on your bill, and you always owed it money. there were even cases where the women were forced to perform sexual acts if the bill wasn't paid on on time.
back in the days before the mines were unionised in Southern West Virginia, if the man in the family was injured, the company would allow his wife and even his children to work his area to meet his quota. if she didn't meet it, then that's where the ticket got paid in other ways.
It means he was in economic trouble and deep stress because of you and your brothers and/or sisters if you had. Just kidding. I mean it's probably true. But just kidding.
I remember when that song came out in the 1950's. It still has meaning today in 2020. Work hard all of your life and get nothing in return but anguish.
That's minimum wage work and those who live paycheck to paycheck in a nutshell. People are starting to wake up and mass quitting in droves. Either this song played nonstop or they played too much 76
alright alright alight all of you are fucking wrong. its from both skyrim and fallout though i purely visualize fallout. ingots can be found in both. fallout 76 can suck a new Vegas. its over encumbered. and no i shan't hold up.
My elementary School music teacher would play this song on a daily basis and hearing it on South Park for like the first time in ten years was that perfect “oh shit I completely forgot about that”
A Union song that's still in circulation today. Hat's off to Tennessee Ernie Ford. A piece of history here, a song from the time pre-weekends, pre-benefits, pre-organized-labor, when your bosses literally owned you through indentured debt. Glad to say we've come a long way since then.
It'll only get worse from here if REPUBS keep going.. Arkansas has already changed their child labor laws to have KIDS as young as 10 yrs old working in slaughter houses!...and McDonald's has had to pay fines for being caught with 10 yr olds working..😡😡😡😡😡😡😡 I was 14 when I started working delivering newspapers...very SAD this has come to that!!
At Amazon, I've gotten this played at stand up meetings often. Only a few people seem to understand it, but it gets some small chuckles. "Working Class Blues" do tend to ironically drive production and quality up.
@@irony373 Nothing. You get it done? They bring you more work. Get that done? They become dependent on you doing that much every day, plan things around it, and if you don't, then YOU sunk the ship.
just simple observation comment, nothing more, that many have deep bases singing voices and like the sound of the base voice, including a few big bones girls that also could sing base.
My late dad grew up during the depression in Birmingham, Alabama. His father worked in a coal mine so around quitting time, my dad would go outside to wait for his dad. He saw miners on their way home, white and black, but couldn’t tell which because they were covered head to toe in coal dust. He said black or white, every one of them looked dead tired and beat down. I had another relative, a great uncle or something, who smoked tobacco in any form, cigars, cigarettes, and pipe, and chewed plug tobacco while working the mine until his 90’s when he stepped on a rusty old nail, contracted tetanus and died. These were the things my dad talked about whenever he heard this song. Whenever I hear it, I can still hear him, too.
@@billsandiego3385 probably something about his dislike for women who are likely to argue (which normally involves talking in a high tone), so none will end up married with him, "walking the line". I dunno, that's my best guess.
@@billsandiego3385 It means no matter how much his mother scream ,yells and hollers at him to obey her rules he gonna do what he wants. It's a reference to the expression "Toe the Line" meaning to obey a certain set of rules. The high tone woman is his mother raising her voice at him to obey her rules.
@@billsandiego3385 An old comment but when he says "high tone woman" he's referring to a higher class woman, that he's a trouble maker and a proper, civilized woman won't be able to tame him. The line before that he refers to being "raised by a old mama-lion" as in a fierce and powerful mother, and it would take a powerful woman to keep him doing the right thing.
Reminds me of my grandfather. Born in 1922 and a carpenter/welder worked his whole life. He saw alot of hard times and once told me "you'll never get rich digging a ditch." He taught me to invest and live within your means.
My grandmother taught me, "I don't care if you dig ditches for a living, you better be the best damn ditch digger you can be ." Kind of a different vibe I guess 🤣
Sad to see this is essentially what America is now. Working our asses off with the highest production yield ever, and all we get is another day older and deeper in debt.
The pandemic exposed all that. While it's a curse most of the time, one of the positives is the Great Resignation, as most workers are now going better routes that they were unable to before, and this leaves the straw bosses begging them to come back. But alas, not all Americans have that choice for a number of reasons...
Only very vaguely superficially. The problem the song addresses is the company script pay method of the time. Call miners weren't paid in money they were paid in script that could only be used at company stores. so they couldn't leave because they couldn't save money to pay other people to go elsewhere. There isn't really any comparable system nowadays as crappy as some people's lives May be.
I was born in the coal mining town of West Virginia it was coal mining town by the name of number 6 or number 7 and also with the name Filbert. Or Albert I forgot because I was in grade school and we moved to Chicago when I was in the sixth grade
Hi, Karl. Just so you know, your theories and analysis get horribly misused by control freaks who refuse to understand that the endgame is a stateless, moneyless, classless society where the workers control the MOP. Also, the left remains terminally divided for ever and they fight each other indefinitely. The workers never unite and the oligarchs get increasingly subtle and effective at their control and take over the entire wolrd, ultimately leading to multiple existential threats to everything.
listening to this today at my grandpa's funeral definitely's making me bawl my eyes out. he sang it all the time outside on the porch while i played. i always thought he was a good singer although he was weaker than when he was younger..
Sorry for your loss. My grandpa just passed away today. It was one of his favorite songs. He was a great man 6 ft 7 worked hard all of his life to support his family. Tougher than a box of nails. He was a mentor to a lot of us men in the family. He would pick us up from the bus stop and we would help him put out feed, hay, tend to the garden and work on projects. I learned a lot from that man. I will miss him dearly. I am thankful to have a grandpa like him.
@@thesssradio5008 sorry for your loss too man. My grandpa passed away about 10 am this morning. He was at home and surrounded by family and loved ones. I miss him like hell wish i could go over and talk to him. Feels like a bad dream.
You take four more courses, What do you get? Nothing new learned and deeper in debt, Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go, I sold my soul to pay student loans
When I was younger, like maybe 2 years old, there was a lot going on in my life and that was too much to handle for my baby brain so I ended up with a stutter, unable to get a sentence out my mum took me to the doctor and they said that to get rid of it I should sing some nursery rhymes, so my mum sent me to my grandparents and my grandma taught me a couple nursery rhymes, one about a blackbird biting of the maids nose and others, but my grandpa, he taught me this song.. so yeah, I got my voice back and a 2 year old came back home singing “16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the company store” my mum was very confused..
This is one of the greatest songs ever written, as it's wording is so perfectly compact and poetic, and one can just picture this big rough and tough, poor working man - and, of course, Tennessee absolutely kills it in vocal delivery.
It has a whole new meaning in 2020-1. A tough, poor working man is replaced with a tough, underpaid workforce. People are starting to learn from this guy
Humming this to myself shortly before I have a heatstroke sprinting up and down the Amazon warehouse and get taken to the local Amazon hospital in the Amazon town I live in.
@@oliverross6188 Ya know they said Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, and the devil blessed him with the power to play some of the most famous and influential music of all time So you see, hell may indeed be catchy, if put to the right uses ;)
Just finished explaining the meaning of this song to my son. Rules of mining back in the day: Everything (including housing) was provided for the miner, but was deducted from his pay (company script), which was done so the miner could not spend his earned wages anywhere but the store, which was ran by whatever coal company was working that mine. Now, if you got hurt & could not work, or killed (both was common), your family got tossed out onto the street, & if your shift did not meet the expected quota of coal, that was also deducted from the miner's pay. The work force was huge, times was hard, so, if someone got hurt or killed, there was always more waiting to take his place (no healthcare packages back then & mine safety was decades away from even being thought about).
@@lightningpo i mean. He pays you in a currency that only his online store takes and a lot of the bells you do make end up back in his pockets because he only takes bells in his physical store. + he Makes YOU pay for other people's housing plots & public builds, and that money, AGAIN, goes back to him.. also it's not a "free house" if it puts you in thousands of dollars of debt.
Johnny Polo lmao...they did play it on South Park. Amazon Fulfillment center....Lmao. [Not funny, but still] I remember it being on Dumbo when I was a kid. ..speaking of cartoons.
In reading the comments here, I love how new media (South Park & Fallout 76) has used these old classics and made them a bit popular again. I'd completely forgotten about this song till South Park used it on a play off of the work conditions at Amazon.
It doesn't matter if you've known this song for years or if you came here after the South Park episode... What matters is you're here now, listening to good music.
I randomly stumbled upon this song a few months ago, my parents have a flash drive of music plugged in to each of their cars, and I like to listen to this music. This song was somewhere on one of those drives, and it hit me HARD. Neither I nor my family have any kind of history with company towns, but I have read Rocket Boys/October Sky, and that told me all I need to know about the horrors of company towns.
Alina Zagitova depends on where we live...and just like the video bigger job openings occur because of them. I live in Washington state and so big opening for us is BOEING,amazon and Microsoft but depends on your current degrees...don’t get me wrong still like the warehouse process but as always you have parties within amazon and managers always changing things in making it worse for us every year
I recall hearing this song as a child, just another among the many my mom played. This song now resonates with me as I recently discovered my grandfather Jess Ortez was a coal miner for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in southern Colorado near Trinidad. My father was born in a coal camp now ghost town called La Agua. I recently visited this abandoned site with my father. One must drive past the Ludlow Massacre monument and down an extremely bumpy dirt road a few miles to access the ruins. You know you're getting closer when you see the numerous decaying coke ovens to the right. A few more turns and a little more dust swallowed and there it is, collapsing tiny structures leaning sideways and cement foundations for long ago vanished, forgotten buildings. My father & his 5 siblings, grandfather & grandmother lived in such a crumbling one room structure with few comforts and little more than a roof over their heads to protect them from the elements & harsh Colorado weather. I walked up the steps of one such foundation, the one room schoolhouse where my father Frank Ortez first attended school. As I surveyed my surroundings I imagined I could hear the voices of the past as subtle whispers. Children without the nuisances of modern technology scurrying about under spacious skies enveloped by the foothills from which the coal was mined. Mother's hanging hand washed clothes on the many clotheslines stretching across the camp flapping in the southern Colorado breezes. Battle scarred men with pick & shovel in hand bidding adieu to their wives in a gruff voice that comes when on is worn down by life. On Saturday evenings the camp was abuzz with excitement as residents prepared for one of the few comforts in such camps, an evening socializing, drinking, & dancing at the nearby dance hall. My grandfather Jess, and my father & siblings were rescued from this cheerless, depressing existence with the onset of hostilities and the attack on Pearl Harbor. My grandfather enlisted in thew Navy and served in the Pacific theatre. Thank you dad for sharing this little piece of my roots with me.
Considering how Arkansas, Iowa, and Montana are going to make child labor legal again, I am going to have to start spreading this song to my students along with the history behind it.
A lot of people are talking about the south park episode but I first heard this song in Fallout 76. They had shitty mining companies be a pretty prominent part in that game.
There is something calming about this song and the voice like if you are ever about to break just play this in your head and get trought the day somehow
I once knew a man named Bill, he was involved in the mine wars. The Pinkertons actually shot at him, he moved from West Virginia to California and was scared to death to go back, he left his family, his house, and basically his life. He finally got the guts to go back in the 1950s. He got there, visited his family, and went right back. He thought they were still looking for him.
and also that the rent for staying in the company towns were higher then what they were paid, so it didn't matter how much they worked cause they would still be in debt (which was a way for the company to maximize profit)
This song is about when coal miner employers would typically own the town's the mines were located & they paid the miners notes that were only good in said town's to buy necessities.Thus,the miners were giving their employers back the "money" they earned.
As an underpaid removalist I feel this song so much. We are the most underpaid labour industry in Australia. I know a man that is 67 still doing removals because if he doesn’t he won’t be able to have a roof over his head. The labour industry deserves far more money especially as things become more automated
Things have improved slightly more over the years, but only enough that people don't riot and revolt.. But when push comes to shove, the 'company store' has just been replaced by credit cards, and/or college loans. Those that are lucky end up getting a job good enough to pay down their debts, and come out ahead, the rest will quite literally work themselves to death.. I haven't been so lucky, and owe the gov, as well as companies, over 30k. I didn't even get a student loan though, most of that is credit. I made the mistake of quitting school at an early age, so the simple matter of catching up on pre-college stuff, in a province that abolished the GED, has been rough..
@@cullensmith1817 those aren't even the worst companies.. at least they try to give ya stuff for a reasonable price. So many other companies just try to rip people off by pressure selling them overpriced stuff that's designed to break just after the warranty goes bunk..
This song is a classic, Its about the hard working man & woman that can't even afford to die because the system owns him/her.. nothing much has changed these days because your soul is locked to a system of money,and Saint Peter can't call because you will leave your loved ones in financial debt if you pass on!
I heard this in a southpark episode, kinda liked it. Couple moths later i overhear it in the street (something very odd since i live in Spain so this type of music is even less common than in the US) and yesterday, i buy Fallout 76 to play with a friend, turn on the radio and wouldn't you know it, this song again...
When I was10 we had a variety album that had Big John, Ring of Fire and Sixteen Tons, plus others. Thanks for bringing back the memories, wish I still had that old record album.
@@javiercs006 yeah. Well then ore things change, the more they stay the same. The bets business models are where you turn your own employees into consumers too. It’s why supermarkets give their employees a measly 5% off. The offset of having most of their employees be loyal consumers too easily offsets offering them 5% discounts. It’s ironically a gain for them. The bigger the company gets, the more consumers it also gains via employment. Plus during lunch breaks where will that employee shop? Where will he/she buy their soft drink or energy drink? Their fruit? Before going home the employee may do some shopping too. We have created literally a consumer worker class. They work. Then return some of that money to their employees via purchases.
I remember this song as a young man , nice to see it up here and people still enjoying it . I myself was never a big Ernie Ford fan , I was more of a " swing" band fellow and later Rock N Roll , but some of his songs get stuck in your head . I was drafted for Korea and became close to a fellow who grew up in east Kentucky, I remember throughout my childhood hearing about the labor struggles of coal miners but you never know how bad something is until you either live it , see it , or talk to someone who did . He had been a coal miner and told me about the old company housing and company store and being paid with Scrip ( you can probably look that up ) He stayed in the Army after we all mustered out and made a career of it . I was a pall bearer at his funeral 5 years ago . As for Myself I went back home and went to work for Plymouth and retired from the Old North Assembly plant after 35 years I'm thankful for the career I had and what it provided for me especially now In my old age . I sincerely wish that for all of you young fellas . I don't know what became of the world, I'm just a man who assembled cars .if you like good old music try some of the early Rock n Roll and some of the big band and swing for those of you who like to dance .
My grandpa was a coal miner in Pennsylvania. The "company store" reference is because the mine didn't pay wages in cash but in script. Script was only redeemable in the Company Store.
Pook Atim I live in Southern Colorado.They have a lot of Coal Camps from the 1900s
and in northern Co, OakCreek
all of the older men in my family were miners. The company store was a place where you were forced to shop, and the prices there were designed to ensure that there was always something on your bill, and you always owed it money.
there were even cases where the women were forced to perform sexual acts if the bill wasn't paid on on time.
back in the days before the mines were unionised in Southern West Virginia, if the man in the family was injured, the company would allow his wife and even his children to work his area to meet his quota. if she didn't meet it, then that's where the ticket got paid in other ways.
soft rock mines different from the hard rock mines we have in Colorado
My father used to sing this song incessantly when I was a kid. It was great to hear it again. Thanks for posting.
Same man
Yep. Same.
Same
It means he was in economic trouble and deep stress because of you and your brothers and/or sisters if you had.
Just kidding. I mean it's probably true. But just kidding.
Same
I remember when that song came out in the 1950's. It still has meaning today in 2020. Work hard all of your life and get nothing in return but anguish.
And debt, don’t forget the debt
That's minimum wage work and those who live paycheck to paycheck in a nutshell. People are starting to wake up and mass quitting in droves. Either this song played nonstop or they played too much 76
@@S.K.R.E.Inc. How does one quit and survive? I haven't worked that part out yet.
@@shangtsung1362 welfare
@@shangtsung1362 you don't
“sixteen tons”
*YOU ARE OVERCUMBERED AND CANNOT RUN*
Dragon bones and dragons scales be like:
@@themightyaqua1145 it was more a fallout reference but ok
Hold up
Funnily enough I come here from fo76
alright alright alight all of you are fucking wrong. its from both skyrim and fallout though i purely visualize fallout. ingots can be found in both. fallout 76 can suck a new Vegas. its over encumbered. and no i shan't hold up.
It warms my heart knowing that South Park of all things is going to bring this gem to the younger masses.
Younger here and yes this gem is stuuuuck in my ear
My elementary School music teacher would play this song on a daily basis and hearing it on South Park for like the first time in ten years was that perfect “oh shit I completely forgot about that”
Fallout 76 brought this gem to me.
And Fallout 76.
Fallout sadly
He's got a very strong and full voice. I'll admit I'm a little envious. Voices like his are very hard to not notice
Almost like a handsome baritone voice
A Union song that's still in circulation today. Hat's off to Tennessee Ernie Ford. A piece of history here, a song from the time pre-weekends, pre-benefits, pre-organized-labor, when your bosses literally owned you through indentured debt. Glad to say we've come a long way since then.
u must not know about the trucking industry for lps lol
Heard this as a kid. Then news about Amazon towns came up and this instantly started playing in my head, and gets louder with every strike
i am a kid so same :D
It'll only get worse from here if REPUBS keep going.. Arkansas has already changed their child labor laws to have KIDS as young as 10 yrs old working in slaughter houses!...and McDonald's has had to pay fines for being caught with 10 yr olds working..😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
I was 14 when I started working delivering newspapers...very SAD this has come to that!!
Having spent 3 years at an Amazon warehouse, I kinda want to go back for a season just to play this song on full blast until they fire me
At Amazon, I've gotten this played at stand up meetings often. Only a few people seem to understand it, but it gets some small chuckles. "Working Class Blues" do tend to ironically drive production and quality up.
but "what do get?" despite the production and quality?
@@irony373 Nothing. You get it done? They bring you more work. Get that done? They become dependent on you doing that much every day, plan things around it, and if you don't, then YOU sunk the ship.
@@namelesswanderer9315 what do you expect from a corporation?
@@irony373 More work for less money, so I am never disappointed. :)
This song was used in a South Park episode that showed what it was like working at Amazon
What a deep voice, so great
Pitch-wise, its just a typical bass voice, but its very rich.
Many of us with that pitch base singing voice
Wait, I'm confused. What are you trying to communicate? That there are a lot of basses around? Please explain!
just simple observation comment, nothing more, that many have deep bases singing voices and like the sound of the base voice, including a few big bones girls that also could sing base.
Casimir y
My late dad grew up during the depression in Birmingham, Alabama. His father worked in a coal mine so around quitting time, my dad would go outside to wait for his dad. He saw miners on their way home, white and black, but couldn’t tell which because they were covered head to toe in coal dust. He said black or white, every one of them looked dead tired and beat down. I had another relative, a great uncle or something, who smoked tobacco in any form, cigars, cigarettes, and pipe, and chewed plug tobacco while working the mine until his 90’s when he stepped on a rusty old nail, contracted tetanus and died. These were the things my dad talked about whenever he heard this song. Whenever I hear it, I can still hear him, too.
Weird, I heard this song recently after not hearing it for about 20 years, then South Park uses it.
Tom Thumb no they pay the people to use it or just get confirmation
South Park was the first time I heard it.
Lol yeah
now utah is letting corporations form their own towns and governments
@@tylernilson7021 I'm pretty sure that was Nevada?
Some things, like this song, are timeless.
Dan Fleury Was
Agreed
As long as the cancer of capitalism exists it'll will never be outdated
One of my favorite songs for years. Not just for lyricism but...just everything. One of the best folk songs ever.
Definitely my favorite. If I ever get a tattoo? it'll say 16 tons😊❣
Great voice with a great arrangement!
When Ford sings the line "Ain't no high tone woman make me walk the line" you can hear him chuckle.
What does that line mean?
@@billsandiego3385 probably something about his dislike for women who are likely to argue (which normally involves talking in a high tone), so none will end up married with him, "walking the line". I dunno, that's my best guess.
@@billsandiego3385 It means no matter how much his mother scream ,yells and hollers at him to obey her rules he gonna do what he wants. It's a reference to the expression "Toe the Line" meaning to obey a certain set of rules. The high tone woman is his mother raising her voice at him to obey her rules.
@@billsandiego3385 An old comment but when he says "high tone woman" he's referring to a higher class woman, that he's a trouble maker and a proper, civilized woman won't be able to tame him. The line before that he refers to being "raised by a old mama-lion" as in a fierce and powerful mother, and it would take a powerful woman to keep him doing the right thing.
@@3serdna3 He was abused by his mother.
"Perhaps... You should no longer be an Amazon Prime member."
Hell yeah
I'm Amazon USDA Choice.
76 years later and still relevant.
Profit has played games with the mind for many thousands of years.
Reminds me of my grandfather. Born in 1922 and a carpenter/welder worked his whole life. He saw alot of hard times and once told me "you'll never get rich digging a ditch." He taught me to invest and live within your means.
My grandmother taught me, "I don't care if you dig ditches for a living, you better be the best damn ditch digger you can be ." Kind of a different vibe I guess 🤣
Sad to see this is essentially what America is now. Working our asses off with the highest production yield ever, and all we get is another day older and deeper in debt.
Always has been…
The pandemic exposed all that. While it's a curse most of the time, one of the positives is the Great Resignation, as most workers are now going better routes that they were unable to before, and this leaves the straw bosses begging them to come back. But alas, not all Americans have that choice for a number of reasons...
This is what is called wage slavery
It's been like this since the days of old, it's how society has to work or you're gonna have worse leaches than we have now
Only very vaguely superficially. The problem the song addresses is the company script pay method of the time. Call miners weren't paid in money they were paid in script that could only be used at company stores. so they couldn't leave because they couldn't save money to pay other people to go elsewhere. There isn't really any comparable system nowadays as crappy as some people's lives May be.
I'm glad south park introduced this song to so many new people, hailing from WV this song was a large part of my home states history.
I was born in the coal mining town of West Virginia
it was coal mining town by the name of number 6 or number 7 and also with the name Filbert. Or Albert
I forgot because I was in grade school and we moved to Chicago when I was in the sixth grade
Pretty sure you’re from Germany, Karl Marx father of communism
@@PrismGenesis You got me, I'm from Germany about as much as Stalin is from Russia.
Karl Marx eyyyyy 😂
Hi, Karl. Just so you know, your theories and analysis get horribly misused by control freaks who refuse to understand that the endgame is a stateless, moneyless, classless society where the workers control the MOP. Also, the left remains terminally divided for ever and they fight each other indefinitely. The workers never unite and the oligarchs get increasingly subtle and effective at their control and take over the entire wolrd, ultimately leading to multiple existential threats to everything.
I owe my soul to the college loan
Amen.
blablabla you owe your soul to JESUS. And, if you have sold your soul to the devil,then JESUS can break the contract
Kaitlyn McKessy s
Kaitlyn McKessy Please, somebody , one mercyful soul who explain Kaitlyn McKessy wath sarcasm is
The more things change....
listening to this today at my grandpa's funeral definitely's making me bawl my eyes out. he sang it all the time outside on the porch while i played. i always thought he was a good singer although he was weaker than when he was younger..
Sorry for your loss. My grandpa just passed away today. It was one of his favorite songs. He was a great man 6 ft 7 worked hard all of his life to support his family. Tougher than a box of nails. He was a mentor to a lot of us men in the family. He would pick us up from the bus stop and we would help him put out feed, hay, tend to the garden and work on projects. I learned a lot from that man. I will miss him dearly. I am thankful to have a grandpa like him.
@@thesssradio5008 sorry for your loss too man. My grandpa passed away about 10 am this morning. He was at home and surrounded by family and loved ones. I miss him like hell wish i could go over and talk to him. Feels like a bad dream.
May he rest in peace...
@@thesssradio5008 so sorry for your loss...
@@etownsend9116 so sorry for your loss...
You take four more courses,
What do you get?
Nothing new learned and deeper in debt,
Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go,
I sold my soul to pay student loans
Would sound more catchy at the end instead of student load pit student debt :D
Should have went to a trade school instead a of fueling the socialist furnace
You're seriously conflating accumulating student debt with slaving for a pittance in a coal mine?
Christopher Hall now I’m no expert in this but I think it’s possible he was trying to be funny, which was subjectively accomplished in my opinion
@@chrishall8705 bruh
Doesn't matter how many years pass by, this song will allways stay true.
2020 still going on.
@@abran794 2023 song only gets more relevant
My grandmother played this to me thirty years ago - and then, when thinking of her yesterday, I remembered it. Now I absolutely love this tune :o)
When I was younger, like maybe 2 years old, there was a lot going on in my life and that was too much to handle for my baby brain so I ended up with a stutter, unable to get a sentence out my mum took me to the doctor and they said that to get rid of it I should sing some nursery rhymes, so my mum sent me to my grandparents and my grandma taught me a couple nursery rhymes, one about a blackbird biting of the maids nose and others, but my grandpa, he taught me this song.. so yeah, I got my voice back and a 2 year old came back home singing “16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the company store” my mum was very confused..
Betcha learned more from that song than one about blackbirds biting off maids' noses.
you were singing songs at 2 years old ye'say?
'sing a song of sixpence' is the song your grandma was teaching you, it's an old english nursery rhyme.
@@satanicinduction Mozart composed his first piece at age four--a two-year-old singing complex folk songs isn't that unusual by comparison.
😂😂
Wow South Park can really revive lost talent.
Can't wait to hear more music from this Ernie guy
He died like 30 years ago
Sheneiqwa Lapoots Ceo of missing the joke
@@slconcerts3497 r/Wooooosh
This is one of the greatest songs ever written, as it's wording is so perfectly compact and poetic, and one can just picture this big rough and tough, poor working man - and, of course, Tennessee absolutely kills it in vocal delivery.
It has a whole new meaning in 2020-1. A tough, poor working man is replaced with a tough, underpaid workforce. People are starting to learn from this guy
....I work for Amazon, and I play this every morning to remind myself who I owe my soul to. Lol
Call your local Teamsters office and find out what it takes to get your building unionized
Humming this to myself shortly before I have a heatstroke sprinting up and down the Amazon warehouse and get taken to the local Amazon hospital in the Amazon town I live in.
That sounds like Hell.
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Thank you South Park for imparting this gem to us all 💎
One fist of iron, the other of steel. If the right one don't get ya then the left one will!
Now we know your not def
Different coal mine song but all them coal miners were tough.
This song seems related to Big Bad John
My dad used to sing this song all the time when he was working on the backyard when I was little.
As soon as I saw this that lyric played
This song is catchy as hell =)
Songs were good a hundred years ago
It is
@@alinabelebei your comment lacks logical backing. Explain.
bittersweet furrytrash What a dick
@@oliverross6188 Ya know they said Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, and the devil blessed him with the power to play some of the most famous and influential music of all time
So you see, hell may indeed be catchy, if put to the right uses ;)
Sultans of swing, please.
I'm Mexican and this is the best way for me to practice pronuntation and reading in English.
Thanks from Los Cabos, México.
Just finished explaining the meaning of this song to my son.
Rules of mining back in the day:
Everything (including housing) was provided for the miner, but was deducted from his pay (company script), which was done so the miner could not spend his earned wages anywhere but the store, which was ran by whatever coal company was working that mine.
Now, if you got hurt & could not work, or killed (both was common), your family got tossed out onto the street, & if your shift did not meet the expected quota of coal, that was also deducted from the miner's pay.
The work force was huge, times was hard, so, if someone got hurt or killed, there was always more waiting to take his place (no healthcare packages back then & mine safety was decades away from even being thought about).
Thanks for the explanation ye old boomer ( no really thank you I was very confused.
Also why women would often remarry very soon after a husbands death. Or at least that was common in Britain.
Big thanks to the socialist unionizers who helped them get power back from the companies
@@ststst981 sadly the new company stores is Amazon's of our time.
If I was to sell my soul , I'd work for the Xbox division of Microsoft
That makes the song even worse in context goddamn
I owe my soul to paying off Tom Nook's home loans.
In reality, Tom Nook is the best dude ever. Free house + pay it off whenever, no pressure.
@@lightningpo he doesn't even foreclose on you. Try that with a real mortgage
Isabel won’t help none I owe my soul to the new horizons
@@lightningpo i mean. He pays you in a currency that only his online store takes and a lot of the bells you do make end up back in his pockets because he only takes bells in his physical store. + he Makes YOU pay for other people's housing plots & public builds, and that money, AGAIN, goes back to him..
also it's not a "free house" if it puts you in thousands of dollars of debt.
Lol
This is how I feel when I get home from working the graveyard shift.
Ps. younger me, lay off the data usage at work.
Black_Mask I hope you've trained a protege by then...
You're using Megaman EXE's logo.
That is sort of the point
@@anak_kucing101 yes.
My dad and mom love this Tennessee Ernie Ford “16 Tons” Recording!; His is the best!
Great song! Was just introduced to it on South Park of all places.
Johnny Polo lmao...they did play it on South Park. Amazon Fulfillment center....Lmao. [Not funny, but still]
I remember it being on Dumbo when I was a kid. ..speaking of cartoons.
Same here!
Johnny Polo
Josh the Marxist box is my new favorite character.
Hope some people attack South Park for being a communist propangada machine x
Wasn’t even the first time South Park lead me here. Butters sang a bit of this back in Season 8.
This is the song I listen to on my way to work to get me motivated.
In reading the comments here, I love how new media (South Park & Fallout 76) has used these old classics and made them a bit popular again. I'd completely forgotten about this song till South Park used it on a play off of the work conditions at Amazon.
My grandpa was a miner 20 plus years in West Virginia. Definitely reminds me of him.
The first time I heard this song was on my part time at a retail job. Whoever set the tracklist for the store must have had a mean humor.
1:25 I like that little chuckel.
The world hasn’t changed much
Really hasn't.
People like to pretend, though.
It doesn't matter if you've known this song for years or if you came here after the South Park episode... What matters is you're here now, listening to good music.
I randomly stumbled upon this song a few months ago, my parents have a flash drive of music plugged in to each of their cars, and I like to listen to this music. This song was somewhere on one of those drives, and it hit me HARD. Neither I nor my family have any kind of history with company towns, but I have read Rocket Boys/October Sky, and that told me all I need to know about the horrors of company towns.
how long has this song been relatable? 2022 every fucking store is the company store
I work as a loader at a shipping company, this song fits perfectly, right down to owing my soul to the company store for my safety gear😁
it's funny I saw an Amazon commercial before the video opened 😂
My grandfather was a coal miner in Pennsylvania too. My mom's favorite Tennessee Ernie Ford song was sixteen tons.
my dad used to love singing this song all the time,i can still hear him singing it aswell...i love you daddy
Going back to this. Nevada about to allow rich corporations to start their own governments and towns.
Jeff Bezos says there are customers' needs are still unfulfilled.
Now Jeff bezos says he’s an astronaut…
I like the fact that southpark shows the younger generation that there is awesome old music... :)
Yeah this song is catchy
Who is here because you work for Amazon!?
Why do you work for amazon? They dont pay taxes and kill planet with fossil fuels for delivery and plastic wrapping of each tiny item
Alina Zagitova depends on where we live...and just like the video bigger job openings occur because of them. I live in Washington state and so big opening for us is BOEING,amazon and Microsoft but depends on your current degrees...don’t get me wrong still like the warehouse process but as always you have parties within amazon and managers always changing things in making it worse for us every year
9gager approved
THEY TOOK OUR JOBS!!!!!!!
Eh.
I recall hearing this song as a child, just another among the many my mom played. This song now resonates with me as I recently discovered my grandfather Jess Ortez was a coal miner for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in southern Colorado near Trinidad. My father was born in a coal camp now ghost town called La Agua. I recently visited this abandoned site with my father. One must drive past the Ludlow Massacre monument and down an extremely bumpy dirt road a few miles to access the ruins. You know you're getting closer when you see the numerous decaying coke ovens to the right. A few more turns and a little more dust swallowed and there it is, collapsing tiny structures leaning sideways and cement foundations for long ago vanished, forgotten buildings. My father & his 5 siblings, grandfather & grandmother lived in such a crumbling one room structure with few comforts and little more than a roof over their heads to protect them from the elements & harsh Colorado weather. I walked up the steps of one such foundation, the one room schoolhouse where my father Frank Ortez first attended school. As I surveyed my surroundings I imagined I could hear the voices of the past as subtle whispers. Children without the nuisances of modern technology scurrying about under spacious skies enveloped by the foothills from which the coal was mined. Mother's hanging hand washed clothes on the many clotheslines stretching across the camp flapping in the southern Colorado breezes. Battle scarred men with pick & shovel in hand bidding adieu to their wives in a gruff voice that comes when on is worn down by life. On Saturday evenings the camp was abuzz with excitement as residents prepared for one of the few comforts in such camps, an evening socializing, drinking, & dancing at the nearby dance hall. My grandfather Jess, and my father & siblings were rescued from this cheerless, depressing existence with the onset of hostilities and the attack on Pearl Harbor. My grandfather enlisted in thew Navy and served in the Pacific theatre. Thank you dad for sharing this little piece of my roots with me.
Frank Ortez Thank you for sharing your bit of family history, it was very insightful
You should be a book writer you said this with such detail and meaning
Considering how Arkansas, Iowa, and Montana are going to make child labor legal again, I am going to have to start spreading this song to my students along with the history behind it.
Big difference between Those states having Minors (14-17) not require a permit to work anymore and scrapping all child labour laws.
lost this song for years, my dad passed recently and I finally remembered it. I hope you have peace now dad 💜
I picture Amazon playing this during orientation lol....
I cant get over the clarinet in this
Still a classic after all these years.
Holy shit! This is Rage Against the Machine 100 years before they were raging!
cant wait to live in amazon town
Who's here after the Amazon news ?
if you can please stand for the 9 to 5 anthem
7 to 5 take it or leave it
A lot of people are talking about the south park episode but I first heard this song in Fallout 76. They had shitty mining companies be a pretty prominent part in that game.
Came here because of South Park !!!! They took our jobs!!!!
Dey derk our jerbz!
derka doo
They broke his jaw! Broke his jaw... Rooster cockadoodledoo!!!!!
They tooook arrrrr jaaaabs
DERRRKA DERBS!!!!!!!!
There is something calming about this song and the voice like if you are ever about to break just play this in your head and get trought the day somehow
Jojocandy calming...? More like scary as hell.[Even thow its a great song.]
Тоже от Шустрилы) ?
I once knew a man named Bill, he was involved in the mine wars. The Pinkertons actually shot at him, he moved from West Virginia to California and was scared to death to go back, he left his family, his house, and basically his life. He finally got the guts to go back in the 1950s. He got there, visited his family, and went right back. He thought they were still looking for him.
South Park put me onto this song and now I love it
Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the Amazon store
Munif A. At least it’s not South Park’s fulfillment center!
Lil Addy Mr Trent The Government Store
Cleveland Ironman Tegridy weed
I listen to this every day on my way to work at the Walmart Distribution Center here in town. The humor of it gets me through the hell of that place.
My late beloved father sang this song all the time Great song
Yes! Our Dad's knew the true meaning... never for one second thinking we would ever be back in those times 🙃
I first listened to this song when I was five years old. Even then, I figured out what it meant. I could not believe people lived like that.
what do you mean by that, bill chew?
and also that the rent for staying in the company towns were higher then what they were paid, so it didn't matter how much they worked cause they would still be in debt (which was a way for the company to maximize profit)
I love this song when I was little and I still love this song
People still live like this, in developing countries. Capitalism says you're welcome.
+hypnotoad's disciple And communism says well give all no hope equally.
This song is about when coal miner employers would typically own the town's the mines were located & they paid the miners notes that were only good in said town's to buy necessities.Thus,the miners were giving their employers back the "money" they earned.
So, Walmart and Amazon with their "employee currency" these days? Good to know. Even though US wage laws today prohibit this...
As an underpaid removalist I feel this song so much. We are the most underpaid labour industry in Australia. I know a man that is 67 still doing removals because if he doesn’t he won’t be able to have a roof over his head. The labour industry deserves far more money especially as things become more automated
I bet this song is still popular in Appalachia WV
Working in an Amazon warehouse be like
South Park brought me here with that one.
Things have improved slightly more over the years, but only enough that people don't riot and revolt.. But when push comes to shove, the 'company store' has just been replaced by credit cards, and/or college loans. Those that are lucky end up getting a job good enough to pay down their debts, and come out ahead, the rest will quite literally work themselves to death.. I haven't been so lucky, and owe the gov, as well as companies, over 30k. I didn't even get a student loan though, most of that is credit. I made the mistake of quitting school at an early age, so the simple matter of catching up on pre-college stuff, in a province that abolished the GED, has been rough..
Or you owe debt to retail stores like Walmart and Best Buy or online sites like Amazon. Another day older and their pockets get fat.
@@cullensmith1817 those aren't even the worst companies.. at least they try to give ya stuff for a reasonable price. So many other companies just try to rip people off by pressure selling them overpriced stuff that's designed to break just after the warranty goes bunk..
@@sizlax And we think the Five Families of NYC are criminals.
This song is a classic, Its about the hard working man & woman that can't even afford to die because the system owns him/her.. nothing much has changed these days because your soul is locked to a system of money,and Saint Peter can't call because you will leave your loved ones in financial debt if you pass on!
Because of south park ever since i started working at amazon this song constantly plays in my head
Thanks fallout 76 for getting this stuck in my head 😭
@Hunter Steidle ok? You want a fucking medal?
@@ashlyeuphoria9785 ok? You wanna fucking explain yourself trying to be a dick to a comment that came out 8 months ago?
@@busybiscy cus he/she is trying to act like there better than the poster by having prior knowledge of the song and of story
@@ashlyeuphoria9785 Your insult was as basic as you are!!
South Park Sent me here and i'm glad because this is a nice song.
I heard this in a southpark episode, kinda liked it. Couple moths later i overhear it in the street (something very odd since i live in Spain so this type of music is even less common than in the US) and yesterday, i buy Fallout 76 to play with a friend, turn on the radio and wouldn't you know it, this song again...
As a person who is currently working at Logistics, i can confirm this is true
I first heard this song when I was 5 but could figure out what it meant and could not believe people lived like this
True then, true now✊🏿
Discovered this song while driving an '87 Ford Tempo with only an AM radio. I've loved it ever since.
When I was10 we had a variety album that had Big John, Ring of Fire and Sixteen Tons, plus others. Thanks for bringing back the memories, wish I still had that old record album.
South Park gang checking in.
You’re here to
Checking in
Damn me too
DEY TOKE RE JREBS
Same. That season had some good songs
Geoff Castellucci is doing this song soon!!!!!
He released it on Patreon today, and it is AMAZING.
The monotony of working in an Amazon Fulfillment Center brought me here.
For no reason whatsoever this has been going round and round in my head all day.
Just saw the news about Nevada so this song felt apt
Amazon be like:
Oh shit
Hey, Amazon's even brought back scrip! It's like they brought back all the bad parts of the eras we're nostalgic for.
*Amazon workers
@@javiercs006 yeah. Well then ore things change, the more they stay the same.
The bets business models are where you turn your own employees into consumers too.
It’s why supermarkets give their employees a measly 5% off.
The offset of having most of their employees be loyal consumers too easily offsets offering them 5% discounts.
It’s ironically a gain for them.
The bigger the company gets, the more consumers it also gains via employment.
Plus during lunch breaks where will that employee shop?
Where will he/she buy their soft drink or energy drink?
Their fruit?
Before going home the employee may do some shopping too.
We have created literally a consumer worker class. They work. Then return some of that money to their employees via purchases.
capitalism
I remember this song as a young man , nice to see it up here and people still enjoying it . I myself was never a big Ernie Ford fan , I was more of a " swing" band fellow and later Rock N Roll , but some of his songs get stuck in your head . I was drafted for Korea and became close to a fellow who grew up in east Kentucky, I remember throughout my childhood hearing about the labor struggles of coal miners but you never know how bad something is until you either live it , see it , or talk to someone who did . He had been a coal miner and told me about the old company housing and company store and being paid with Scrip ( you can probably look that up ) He stayed in the Army after we all mustered out and made a career of it . I was a pall bearer at his funeral 5 years ago . As for Myself I went back home and went to work for Plymouth and retired from the Old North Assembly plant after 35 years I'm thankful for the career I had and what it provided for me especially now In my old age . I sincerely wish that for all of you young fellas . I don't know what became of the world, I'm just a man who assembled cars .if you like good old music try some of the early Rock n Roll and some of the big band and swing for those of you who like to dance .
The older this song gets, the more relivent it becomes
The future of America if it keeps up!
lmao this song is literally talking about the past things have only gotten better since then