"Allentown Jail" is a folk song. Written by Irving Gordon

Irving Gordon

Irving Gordon was an American songwriter.-Biography:Irving Gordon was born in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, he studied violin, and after attending public schools in New York City, went to work in the Catskill Mountains at some of the resort hotels in the area...

, it tells the story of a man who is caught stealing a diamond for his girlfriend and ends up in the Allentown

Allentown, Pennsylvania

Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...

 jail.

In 1951

1951 in music

-Events:*January 29 – Nilla Pizzi wins the first annual Sanremo Music Festival with "Grazie dei fiori".*February – The first complete performance of Charles Ives's Second Symphony is given in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.*March – Alan...

, Jo Stafford

Jo Stafford

Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American singer of traditional pop music and jazz standards and occasional actress whose career ran from the late 1930s to the early 1960s...

 recorded this song. It was released as a single on Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

.

The song became popular in the folk scene. The Kingston Trio

The Kingston Trio

The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

 recorded a version in 1962

1962 in music

-Events:*January 1 – The Beatles and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes both audition at Decca Records, a company which has the option of signing one group only...

 with plans of releasing it as a single, but the single never came to fruition. Their version has since been released on various CD

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 compilations of their works.

In 1963

1963 in music

-Events:*January 1 – The Beatles start a 5-day tour in Scotland to support the release of their new single, "Love Me Do".*January 4 – At Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy, Dalida receives a Juke Box Global Oscar for the year's most-played artist on juke boxes....

, a more harmonic arrangement was performed by The Lettermen

The Lettermen

The Lettermen are an American male pop music vocal trio. The Lettermen's trademark is close-harmony pop songs with light arrangements. The group started in 1959...

 and released as a single. This version incurred some success, but only a minor degree.

Other artists who recorded this song include The Seekers

The Seekers

The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...

, The Springfields

The Springfields

The Springfields were a British pop-folk vocal trio who had success in the early 1960s in the UK, US and Ireland and included singer Dusty Springfield and her brother, record producer Tom Springfield, along with Tim Feild, later a noted Sufi writer, who was latterly replaced by Mike Hurst, who...

 (folk group of which Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...

 was a member), Billy Strange

Billy Strange

William E. "Billy" Strange is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor.-Recordings and songwriting:...

 and British singers Lita Roza

Lita Roza

Lita Roza was a British singer. Her 1953 number one hit record " That Doggie in the Window?" afforded Roza the privilege of being the first British female singer to top the UK Singles Chart, and the first Liverpudlian to do so.-Biography:Born Lilian Patricia Lita Roza in Liverpool, Lancashire,...

 and Karen Young

Karen Young (British singer)

Karen Young is an English born singer, who had a 1969 hit in the UK Singles Chart with "Nobody's Child" ....

. There is also a French adaptation of the song, "Les prisons du roy", by Edith Piaf

Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

, which was later covered by
Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....

.