This and the line 'I owe my soul to the company store' are a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. The line 'another day older and deeper in debt' from the chorus came from a letter written by Travis's brother John.

Davis's 1966 recording of his version of the song (with some slightly different lyrics and tune, but titled 'Sixteen Tons') appears on the albums George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Union Men and Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian.

There is no supporting evidence for Davis's claim. 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 he also at different times claimed to have written the song as 'Twenty-One Tons'. The sole authorship of 'Sixteen Tons' is attributed to Merle Travis on all recordings beginning with Travis's own 1946 record and is registered with BMI as a Merle Travis composition. JSTOR ( April 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification.

In the mid-1920s, a miner tended to haul eight to ten tons per day, whereas for new miners, other miners would slack off so the new miner could 'make sixteen tons on very first day.' Authorship I owe my soul to the company store.' The titular 'sixteen tons' refers to a practice of initiating new miners. Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say: 'I can't afford to die.

The line 'You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt' came from a letter written by Travis's brother John. It was first released in July 1947 by Capitol on Travis's album Folk Songs of the Hills. Cliffie Stone played bass on the recording. Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946. ' Sixteen Tons' is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

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