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Sixteen Tons
"Sixteen Tons" is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946. Cliffie Stone played bass on the recording. It was first released in July 1947 by Capitol on Travis's album ''Folk Songs of the Hills''. The song became a gold record. 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. Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say: "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store." Tennessee Ernie Ford version The best known version was recorded in 1955 by American singer Tennessee Ernie Ford reached number one in the ''Billboard'' charts, while another version, by Frankie Laine in 1956, was released only in Western Europe, where it gave Ford's version competition. On March 25, 2015, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merle Travis
Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and guitarist born in Rosewood, Kentucky, United States. His songs' lyrics often discussed both the lives and the economic exploitation of American coal miners. Among his many well-known songs and recordings are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues", " I am a Pilgrim" and " Dark as a Dungeon". However, it is his unique guitar style, still called "Travis picking" by guitarists, as well as his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, for which he is best known today. Travis picking is a syncopated style of guitar fingerpicking rooted in ragtime music in which alternating chords and bass notes are plucked by the thumb while melodies are simultaneously plucked by the index finger. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977. Biography Early ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording Preservation Board, whose members are appointed by the Librarian of Congress. The recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry form a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress. The National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 established a national program to guard America's sound recording heritage. The Act created the National Recording Registry, The National Recording Preservation Board and a fund-raising foundation. The purpose of the Registry is to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
That's All (1952 Song)
"That's All" is a 1952 song written by Alan Brandt with music by Bob Haymes. It has been covered by many jazz and blues artists. The first recording, by Nat King Cole in 1953, achieved some popularity but was not among that year's top 20 songs. It was Bobby Darin's version from his 1959 album of the same title that introduced the song to a wider audience, and it has since become a jazz standard. The song is part of the Great American Songbook, and Alec Wilder included it in his book ''American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950'', even though it was composed two years after that period. Wilder gave two reasons for making this exception: (1) “it is one of the last free-flowing, native, and natural melodies in the grand pop style”; (2) “it went through no initial hit phase but became an immediate standard”. Cover versions *Edie Adams on the final episode of ''The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour'' (1960) *Michael Bublé on ''Michael Bublé (2003) *Ceil Clayton on ''Ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Pop
Traditional pop (also known as classic pop and pre-rock and roll pop) is Western culture, Western pop music that generally pre-dates the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. The most popular and enduring songs from this era of music are known as pop standards or American standards. The works of these songwriters and composers are usually considered part of the canon known as the "Great American Songbook". More generally, the term "Standard (music), standard" can be applied to any popular song that has become very widely known within mainstream culture. AllMusic defines traditional pop as "post-big band and pre-rock & roll pop music". Origins Classic pop includes the song output of the Broadway theatre, Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, and Hollywood show tune writers from approximately World War I to the 1950s, such as Irving Berlin, Frederick Loewe, Victor Herbert, Harry Warren, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
You Don't Have To Be A Baby To Cry
"You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry" is a song written by Bob Merrill and Terry Shand, and first recorded in 1950 by Moon Mullican. Other 1950 recordings *Jimmy Dorsey (with vocals by Terry Shand) *Ernest Tubb - peaked at No. 10 on the Most Played Juke Box Folk chart The Caravelles recording British girl group the Caravelles recorded a version of the song in 1963. The single reached No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ... in 1963. In the US, it peaked at No. 3 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and No. 2 on the Middle-Road Singles chart. References 1950 songs 1950 singles 1963 debut singles Ernest Tubb songs Tennessee Ernie Ford songs Songs written by Bob Merrill Smash Records singles {{1960s-single-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labour Union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (such as holiday, health care, and retirement), improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting the integrity of their trade through the increased bargaining power wielded by solidarity among workers. Trade unions typically fund their head office and legal team functions through regularly imposed fees called ''union dues''. The delegate staff of the trade union representation in the workforce are usually made up of workplace volunteers who are often appointed by members in democratic elections. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committee, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents. The UMW was founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 25, 1890, with the merger of two old labor groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union.The Unite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scrip
A scrip (or ''chit'' in India) is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitive payment of employees under truck systems; or for use in local commerce at times when regular currency was unavailable, for example in remote coal towns, military bases, ships on long voyages, or occupied countries in wartime. Besides company scrip, other forms of scrip include land scrip, vouchers, token coins such as subway tokens, IOUs, arcade tokens and tickets, and points on some credit cards. Scrips have gained historical importance and become a subject of study in numismatics and exonumia due to their wide variety and recurring use. Scrip behaves similarly to a currency, and as such can be used to study monetary economics. History A variety of forms of scrip were used at various times in the 19th and 20th centuries. Company scrip Company scrip was a credit against the accrued wages of employ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debt Bondage
Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation. Currently, debt bondage is the most common method of enslavement with an estimated 8.1 million people bonded to labour illegally as cited by the International Labour Organization in 2005. Debt bondage has been described by the United Nations as a form of "modern day slavery" and the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery seeks to abolish the practice.Article 1(a) of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Truck System
Truck wages are wages paid not in conventional money but instead in the form of payment in kind (i.e. commodities, including goods and/or services); credit with retailers; or a money substitute, such as scrip, chits, vouchers or tokens. Truck wages are a characteristic of a truck system. "Truck", in this context, is a relatively archaic English word meaning "exchange" or "barter". Truck system A truck system includes one or both of the following practices under which truck wages are used to defraud and/or exploit workers. * Firstly, the truck wages are demonstrably of a lesser market value than the amount of money that would normally be paid for the same work. * Secondly, truck systems limit employees' ability to choose how to spend their earnings. For example, credit or company scrip might be usable only for the purchase of goods at a monopolistic company-owned store, at which prices are set artificially high. As long as the company store is the only party able and will ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service Co., and its music publishing subsidiary Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., were founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Harold Courlander was editor of the ''Folkways Ethnic Library'' at the time and is credited with coming up with the name "Folkways" for the label. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in the world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In December 1950, Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. was acquired by Howard S. Richmond. In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records. The Folkways catalog includes traditional and contemporary music from around the world as well as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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