Another in our series of “nothing has changed” songs, “In the Ghetto” was recorded 50 years ago and, as one black guy watching this in a reaction video said, the only thing that’s different is that it’s twice as bad now.
The song was written by singer and songwriter Mac Davis, who explained its genesis.
Well, it’s kind of a convoluted story, but it’s a true story. I had been trying to write a song called “The Vicious Circle” for what seemed like ages. I wasn’t old enough (for it) to be “ages,” but I was in my late 20s. The word “ghetto” was just becoming popular to describe the parts of urban areas where poor people were living and couldn’t get out. They were stuck there, and everybody took off to the suburbs.
I grew up with a little kid whose daddy worked with my daddy, and he was a black kid. We were good buddies, 5 or 6 years old. I remember him being one of my best buddies. But he lived in a part of town, and I couldn’t figure out why they had to live where they lived, and we got to live where we lived. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we didn’t have broken bottles every six inches. It was a dirt street ghetto where he lived.
At any rate, I’d always wanted to write a song about it, where a kid is born, he doesn’t have a male parent, and falls into the wrong people and dies just as another kid comes along and replaces him. It’s just a vicious circle. Long story short — I couldn’t find anything to rhyme with “circle.”
I was sitting in the office one day and a buddy of mine, Freddy Weller, came over … He said, ‘Hey, I got this lick that Joe South showed me.’ He played this lick on the guitar, and boy, I just heard (sings) “In the ghetto.”
Elvis was reluctant to record the song because Col. Tom Parker always told him to stay away from “message songs” for fear of alienating listeners who didn’t agree with the message. Producer Chips Moman told Elvis that if he didn’t want the song, Moman would give it to Rosie Grier, the football player-turned-preacher. That did the trick.
Mac Davis himself performed the tune on his TV variety show in 1972.
In the months after it became a hit the song suddenly became a popular one to cover. Here’s Candy Staton’s take.
