Merle Travis

“You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.”

“It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew, where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few.”

“Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store.”

“I can't afford to die. I'd lose a fortune.”

“Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines, it's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.”

“I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine, I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine.”

“Some people say a man is made outta mud. A poor man's made outta muscle and blood.”

“So I'll smoke my cigarette and I'll drink my liquor down, and I'll walk that old long dusty road until I'm in the ground.”

“My father was a coal miner, and I was raised in a coal-mining camp. Music was a way out.”

“The blues ain't nothin' but a good man feelin' bad.”

“Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine, a man will have lust for the lure of the mine.”