The Wild Birds Do Whistle

To the purists, it is not really a folk song if it gets "mechanical reiteration" instead of being passed by mouth from generation to generation. But no American song in many a generation has got as much reiteration in such a short time, mechanical or otherwise, as Sixteen Tons.

It is currently the No. 1 hit on almost every list. It has been called deeply American by some and dangerously radical by others. Where did it come from? Along with its creator, Songwriter Merle Travis, it came out of Kentucky, still a stronghold of American folk song.

The Minor Mode. Not so long ago, when there was not much reading and writing in the Kentucky coal-mining mountains, let alone radio or TV, folk singing was one way to keep track of history. In the town of Dwarf (pop. 300), near Viper, in Perry County, there are folks who can still remember a blind fellow named Oakes. singing about what was going on:

Over the land and over the sea We are marching to set Cuba free; In the midst of the battle, our watchword's the Maine That was destroyed by the treachery of Spain.

Nowadays, such chanted songs are becoming ghosts, along with the company towns and the many mines that have been picked clean of coal. But sooty men still work the smaller mines; they still live in unpainted shacks with their families, and some still try to preserve the old songs.

"Hand me my dulcy-more," 62-year-old "Aunt" Ellen Fields will chirp to a visitor at her house near Viper. "This thang hain't much good any more. Ah put in a new fret--just took a pin and bit the head offen h'it--but h'it still don't play too good." When she plays, she puts the three-stringed instrument across her lap, then strums out the tune on the top string while the bottom two give off a thin, constant drone. For lonesome songs, she tunes the top string down a third to get a minor mode. Sample: Down in some lone valley, in a lonesome place, Where the wild birds do whistle and their notes do increase, Farewell, pretty Saro, I bid you adieu, But I'll dream of pretty Saro wherever I go.

The Company Store. Some of the young people memorize age-old, unwritten hymns and sing them of a Sunday in the Baptist Church, but most of them soon turn to "that jump-up" music. "I hear that hillbilly music," grumps one oldtimer, "but it don't do me pretty much good." Many of the youngsters leave the Kentucky coal-mining country altogether.

One miner's son who left, took along his guitar and kept his feeling for the old music, was Merle Travis of Beech Creek (pop. 788), across the state from Viper.

Merle broadcast songs from Cincinnati's WLW before the war, served a hitch in the Marines and wound up in Hollywood.

He remembered the long, workless summers when his father, deafened by years near the roaring "shaker" screens, would get him to listen for the whistle that was the call back to the mines. If it blew, there would be work--and singing in the Travis house that night.

When Travis decided to record some coal miners' songs in 1947, there were hardly any to be found, so he wrote some--including Sixteen Tons. It was recorded for Capitol recently by deep-voiced Tennessee Ernie Ford, and leaped to the top of the nation's bestseller lists as fast as any record ever made. It has a driving beat, like the cars clanking to and from the underground yard, and its words carry a kind of homey cynicism: You load sixteen tons, 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.

"I wrote the song for purely professional reasons," says Songwriter Travis.

"I simply needed a song. The chorus is from a saying my Dad often used. He never saw real money. He was constantly in debt to the coal company. When shopping was needed, Dad would go to a window and draw little brass tokens against his account. They could only be spent at the company store. His humorous expression was, 'I can't afford to die.

I owe my soul to the company store.' " Added a friend: maybe the song strikes home to Americans "because we all live on credit and owe our souls to some sort of company store."

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