Sixteen Tons, the name of a popular song written in the late 1940s, referred to the amount of coal a miner was expected to load in a day, but in this context may refer to the amount of glass broken out through the installation, or de-installation, process.
His deep country tinged voice was ideally suited to the songs he sang, at first mainly romantic, but he also featured more muscular songs like "Shotgun Boogie" and his biggest hit, "Sixteen Tons".
It shares aspects with debt bondage that was common in the 19th century, as, for example, brothel madams or coal mining companies would find ways to keep their workers supposedly in debt to them ("I owe my soul to the company store"), in order to apply coercive pressure to keep young women from leaving the prostitution business or to keep men from leaving their underpaid coal mine work.
The documentary uses several versions of the song Sixteen Tons while throwing an ironic look at the history of humanity.
The first song played on WXCC, broadcasting in the heart of West Virginia's coal country, was Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons".
Sixteen Tons | Sixteen Candles | Tons River | You're Sixteen | Sixteen Stone | Sixteen Rivers Press | Sixteen Arhats | Sixteen Acres | ''Pennsylvanian'' delivered 325 tons of steel parts for the Hale Telescope | 70000 Tons of Metal |
A seminal work in his career, it brought him fame as an interpreter of traditional American folk music, as a brilliant finger-style guitarist, and as a folk-inspired composer whose songs "Dark as a Dungeon" and "Sixteen Tons", included in all editions of this album, have become classics of folk, country and popular music.