Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons and Tal Wilkenfeld

Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons and Tal Wilkenfeld – Sixteen Tons – Live The 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts, 2009.

Sublime. This is what rock is all about! Not mocking the old ones or trying to be better but paying tribute and moving on.

Phenomenal! Love the smile on Tal’s face – being able to play at this event with so much talent! I’d say lucky girl, but it’s not luck, it’s her talent that got her there! She is a well-regarded session musician and bassist, she has played including Gibbons and Beck, but also Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Herbie Hancock, Todd Rundgren, and others!

Lyrics:
Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said, “Well, a-bless my soul”

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain
Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion
Can’t no high toned woman make me walk the line

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin’, better step aside
A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t get you
Then the left one will

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

Songwriters: Merle Travis
Sixteen Tons lyrics © Unichappell Music Inc., Campbell Connelly And Co. Ltd., Merle’s Girls Music, Elvis Presley Music Inc., Elvis Presley Music, Inc.
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