Southern Raised – Sixteen Tons
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Wow
I still have the 45 and LP with this song by Ernie Ford, groves extremely well worn.
It was my mother’s favorite song, played on a ‘secession’ of equipment.
Alton: my father would sing/hum this sometimes.
A lot of people forgot company stores/towns…where the low pay went right back to management as food-rent…a rigged system that caused crushing poverty and early deaths with Pinkertons murdering unionists. Only then did the baseball bats come out.
To this day, Lamar County Alabama is a democratic hold-out except for Trump voting.
Lest any think to red bait them…they wouldn’t know an image of Che’ from a housecat. My parents were from that area which has a lot of elderly folks. Picking cotton with bleeding fingers dunked in kerosene at the end of the day…and how their parents never complained…but they were farmers at least. Their hands were all scars.
Back then it was democrats who filled the pews-when the handful of Republicans were hitting the links: the horse doctor…the sell-out union rep’s kid they used as a caddy…and a spy; the town lawyer, the mayor and his boss-the company owner who might darken the churchhouse door just long enough to hand the barefoot kids candy canes while the parents bit their lips ’till they bled. NOW you know what that song means.
Jeff Wright:
Not lost on someone who’s family is from the South, and lived there a fair amount, myself. Still, the American Dream is that the progeny will do better than the progenitors. Remember where you came from, but no need to live it.
I fear globalism is returning us to those days under the disguise of capitalism.
Reagan through free trade weakened America in a de facto redistribution of wealth that made our enemies stronger. In the 7O’s China had not one private auto. It’s like the party of transgender snail-darter lives matter is TRYING to give the DNC a bad name so that the CHASE banks can slide a Romney in. He opposes infrastructure out of wanting low taxes-but let’s blame the Greens who want to save a darter that has a red spot above one eye instead of a blue spot behind the other like all the rest. Outside of Musk I hate businessmen from personal experience.
Older men who remember 5O’s-7O’s good wages looked with disdain upon libertarian college kids pushing those political test cards like Jack Chick tracts.
When my Dad called them “communist free traders” when I thought that was a contradiction in terms-like a lot of young college kids-I thought my Dad was losing it.
A very, very long time ago…believe it or not…I was one of those Rand worshippers.
What changed?
I grew up.
I like remakes/covers that add something different. I stumbled across the Geoff Castellucci version of 16 tons a while back.
It’s interesting to consider this along side John Henry. They have a lot in common.
One of the reasons I loathed “grunge” so much: What the heck are you suburban rich kids whining about?!?!
Good song and band. I have never seen a cello like that. I guess that is a more portable version to lug to that location.
Jay……
It’s called a stand-up Cello, also a walking stick cello in a smaller thinner version. The acoustic version is rather common in ApplachIan folk music use.
The electric type is very interesting in the hands of a lady player. To be very PC. ,—NOT!!
Tuna Guo – world-class player:
https://youtu.be/G0OpnBcB9OQ
Jay…
Number #2
Amadeus Electric Quartet
Walking Stick Cello – Electric
https://youtu.be/QugLFzedHzkw
markedup2 mentioned John Henry.
Liked that song as a kid. ‘A steel-drivin’ man.’ As an adult, maybe different connotations.
Alton,
Thanks! I did not know that they made an electric cello. I did not look it up, but I am willing to bet they made an electric bass cello (the even bigger brother of the cello) too.
That is why I come to this site, to learn new things.
Jay-
Tried to find some video of Ian Anderson [Jethro Tull] playing his electric flute, and I stumbled across this video. (Had no clue whatsoever these instruments existed!)
“Paige Long is a world-renowned flutist. She’s also one of a small number of people who can play the three largest flutes in the flute family: the double subcontrabass, the subcontrabass and the contrabass.”
https://youtu.be/ouJDvdg7EZI
3:01
Thanks ! Wayne !!!
I Enjoyed this one Too ?