October 17, 1955. Capitol Records releases Ernie Ford's 52nd single; the A-Side: a bluesed-up arrangement of the Bob Merrill / Terry Shand hit, "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry". On the B-Side, an original from songwriter Merle Travis that Capitol resisted releasing; a song that J. Edgar Hoover called 'blatantly Marxist'. A song many believed might mean the end of Ernie Ford's career. A song put on the B-Side in the hopes it would quickly disappear. It was called 'Sixteen Tons'. Hard-core rec