Songfacts®:

• Soul Brother Number One checks in with this Christmas song where he lets Santa know his first stop should be the ghetto, where he'll be warmly welcomed. It's the first track on his 1968 holiday album A Soulful Christmas, which is filled with original Christmas songs; others include "Soulful Christmas" and an ominously titled instrumental called "Believers Shall Enjoy (Non Believers Shall Suffer)." James Brown also released Christmas albums in 1966 (James Brown Sings Christmas Songs) and 1970 (Hey America It's Christmas).
• The song was written by Hank Ballard, Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis and Charles Bobbit. Ballard, with his group Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, released the original version of "The Twist." He gets a shout-out in the lyrics with the line, "Tell 'em Hank Ballard told you so."
  
  Pee Wee Ellis was a saxophone player in Brown's band; Charles Bobbit was his manager.
• 1968 was a very turbulent year and a pivotal one for James Brown. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. that April, Brown helped keep the peace by performing a concert in Boston. His Christmas offering was another way to connect and uplift the Black community. He got in the spirit by wearing a Santa suit on the album cover and appearing in Jet magazine in a Santa hat. In that article, he explained that he would be giving out gift certificates to families in need over the holidays.
• James Brown was a huge star at the time, particularly in the Black community. He had four #1 R&B hits in 1968, including "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" and "I Got The Feelin'."
• This is the only song in James Brown's catalog with the word "ghetto" in the title. The word isn't used negatively in the lyric, and there's just an oblique reference to poverty, as Brown tells Santa, "You'll know they need you."
  
  It is a reminder that not everybody wakes up Christmas morning with a bounty of presents under the tree. Brown knew this well, having grown up in extreme poverty in Augusta, Georgia.
  
  The following year, Elvis Presley released the song "In The Ghetto," which was a huge hit. That one is a bleak depiction of live in poverty.