Jun 15, 2011
On a cold and grey Chicago morn’
In the Ghetto is Elvis Presley’s most remarkable record, a song about ingrained, generational poverty that both chimed with the revolutionary spirit of the time and, in hindsight, reflected the feeling that, by 1969, that spirit was already ebbing.
That year saw Richard Nixon sworn in as US president, little over eight years after he had lost to JFK. Together with the Vietnam War, to which he remained committed, Nixon’s election symbolised the end of the optimism of the 60s. Elvis’s first US top 10 single in four years fits the mood perfectly.