The worksong has been a common staple in both blues and country since the days of African slaves accompanying their labours with call and response field hollers. And not just slaves - singing while you toil is a tradition found in all cultures and communities where life is hard and the roots of worksongs spread widely from prison songs, sea shanties to Welsh miners singing hymns on their way to work. Which brings us neatly to 'Sixteen Tons', a fingersnapping take on a miner's woes and hardship.Ford's song was in competition with a strong version by Frankie Laine (which got to number ten the same month), and whilst it's a song that Laine was born to sing, Ford bests him by virtue of his tone of helpless resignation that's coupled with a 'don't fuck with me' indignation and a percussive beat of what sounds like a fist smacking into an open palm. There's a vulnerability about Ford's recognition of himself as little more than "a mind that's weak and a back that's strong" and he rides on top of the haunting, thick yet sparse bass twang shuffle of the music with a humility that's missing from Laine's jazzy, proud man swagger.
The end result is something that will resonate with everyman; you don't need to be a miner to recognise that the futility of labour can also be misrepresented as dignity and such social commentary made 'Sixteen Tons' a very different proposition from anything that went before. Pop music was finally growing up and 'Sixteen Tons' still sounds as 'modern' and relevant now as it did then. A copper bottomed classic in fact.
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