On February 1, 1968, Elvis Presley became a father for the first and only time. His daughter Lisa Marie was born in Memphis, and by every account he was over the moon about her.
So you’d think the new dad spent that night bragging to everyone he knew. A baby girl, finally. Something to celebrate.
He did make a phone call. He called Nancy Sinatra. But he wasn’t calling to pass along the good news.
Nancy Sinatra was a singer and the daughter of Frank Sinatra, and you probably know her from “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” She’d just finished shooting a movie with Elvis, “Speedway,” back in 1967, where the two of them played race car drivers. They’d grown close on that set. Close enough that he’d ring her late at night when something was weighing on him, and she says that happened a lot. They talked about serious things, the kind of stuff he didn’t bring up with just anybody.
This was one of those nights.
Nancy has told the story more than once, on Conan O’Brien’s talk show and later to Rolling Stone magazine in 2021. And the Elvis she describes doesn’t sound anything like a man handing out cigars.
“He called me the night his daughter was born, and he was very melancholy,” she said.
That word stuck with her. Melancholy, on what should’ve been one of the best nights of his life.
What was eating at him wasn’t his own baby. Lisa Marie was safe and cared for, set to want for nothing. He was thinking about the other babies born that same night, the ones who’d have none of that.
To Rolling Stone, Nancy said it simply: “he felt bad that the babies born in the ghetto were not as blessed.” On Conan she added, “He was especially worried about the little Black children, he said.”
A brand new father, and his mind was already clear across town with kids he’d never meet.
It’s a side of Elvis most folks never got to see. The public knew the showman up on stage. It took someone like Nancy, on the other end of the phone at a quiet hour, to catch the softer man underneath. Here she is telling the story herself, which lands a lot harder than reading it on a page.
Nancy Sinatra remembers the late-night call Elvis made when Lisa Marie was born
About a year later, Elvis walked into a studio and recorded “In the Ghetto,” a song about a poor child born with the whole world against him. Some people were surprised he’d pick something like that. Knowing what he told Nancy that night, it fits.
He didn’t talk about this part of himself in public much. Nancy knew it was there because she heard it straight from him, late at night, when the rest of the world had already decided who Elvis was.