| "In the Ghetto" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Elvis Presley | ||||
| B-side | "Any Day Now" (Burt Bacharach, Bob Hilliard) | |||
| Released | April 1969 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock, gospel | |||
| Length | 2:45 | |||
| Label | RCA Records | |||
| Writer(s) | Mac Davis | |||
| Elvis Presley singles chronology | ||||
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"In the Ghetto" (originally titled "The Vicious Circle") is a song recorded by Elvis Presley and published by Elvis Presley Music in 1969. It was written by Mac Davis and made famous by Elvis Presley who had a major comeback hit with the song in 1969. It was released in 1969 as a 45 rpm single with "Any Day Now" as the flip side. It is a narrative of a generational poverty: a boy child is born to a mother who already has more children than she can feed in the ghetto of Chicago; the boy grows up hungry, steals and fights, purchases a gun and steals a car, attempts to run, but is shot and killed just as his own son is born, with the strong implication that the newborn's fate will be the same as his father's and the circle unbroken. The feeling of an inescapable circle is created by the structure of the song, with its simple, stark phrasing; by the repetition of the phrase "in the ghetto" as the close of every fourth line; and finally by the repetition of the first verse's "and his mama cries" just before the beginning and as the close of the last verse.
The song was Presley's first Top 10 hit in the US in four years, peaking at number 3, and his first UK Top 10 hit in three years.[1]
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"In the Ghetto" was recorded during Presley's session in the American Sound Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. It was Presley's first creative recording session since the '68 Comeback. Other hits recorded at this session were "Suspicious Minds", "Kentucky Rain", and "Don't Cry Daddy".
Due to its recent success, Presley used it in his set list when he returned to performing live in Las Vegas in 1969, usually introducing it as "A song that did well for me recently, ladies and gentlemen".
During his next engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, in February, 1970, he joined the end of "Walk a Mile in My Shoes" with the intro to "In the Ghetto," and several recorded examples of this are available from this season.
During the dinner show on 13 August 1970 he intertwined the song with "Don't Cry Daddy".
The song was recorded in 2007 by Lisa Marie Presley as a duet to raise money for the Presley Foundation. The song was released on iTunes, it reached #1 on iTunes in the US.
After Elvis Presley, the song has been performed by many other artists. Among them were, most notably, Sammy Davis Jr., Susan Cadogan, Candi Staton, Dolly Parton, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Cranberries, Merle Haggard, Leatherface, Three Six Mafia, Skrewdriver, DNX vs. The Voice, Ghetto People feat. L-Viz, Frank Flynn, Natalie Merchant, Bad Lieutenant and Fair Warning. The KLF used a sample of the Elvis recording in their ambient DJ album Chill Out. Mac Davis recorded a version of the song for a greatest hits album released in 1979. In 2011, Chris de Burgh covered the song on his Footsteps 2 CD.
| "In the Ghetto" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds | ||||
| from the album From Her to Eternity | ||||
| Released | June 18, 1984 | |||
| Format | 7" | |||
| Recorded | March 1984 | |||
| Label | Mute Records | |||
| Producer | Flood | |||
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds singles chronology | ||||
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"In the Ghetto" is the debut single by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was recorded at the Trident Studios in London and released as a 7" on June 18, 1984 with the B-side "The Moon Is in the Gutter".[2] It reached 84 on the UK Singles Chart.[3]
Paul Shanklin recorded a parody called "In a Yugo" for Rush Limbaugh, in which an environmentally conscious family buys a Yugo to save gas, only to get killed by a truck after swerving to miss a duck.[4] Later, Shanklin updated his parody for a new generation too young to remember the Yugo, replacing it with its perceived equivalent, "In A Hybrid".
El Vez recorded a version titled "En el Barrio" that mixed humor with details about Chicano struggles.
Danish Radio group "Selvsving" also recorded a parody called "Ned i NATO", which makes fun of former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's path to a leading post at NATO.
In Spain there is a well-known cover by El principe gitano in which he sang in phonetic English mixed with Romani words.
In the TV cartoon series South Park, the character Eric Cartman sings an excerpt in the episode "Chickenpox" while walking through Kenny's neighborhood on "the wrong side of the tracks."
An episode of the drama series Harry's Law is named after the song. The episode is based around a gang related drive by shooting in the ghetto of Cincinnati and the events that follow. One of the recurring characters, Tommy Jefferson, mentions how the situation reminds him of the song. The song then plays over the closing credits.
The song was also featured in "Everybody Loves Raymond' were Raymond was singing "In The Ghetto" while vaccuming the floor wearing boxers.
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