The House of the Rising Sun

Like many folk songs, "The House of the Rising Sun" is of uncertain authorship. Musicologists say that it is based on the tradition of broadside ballads, and thematically it has some resemblance to the 16th-century ballad "The Unfortunate Rake", yet there is no evidence suggesting that there is any direct relation.[4] The folk song collector Alan Lomax suggested that the melody might be related to a 17th-century folk song, "Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave", also known as "Matty Groves",[5][6] but a survey by Bertrand Bronson showed no clear relationship between the two songs.[7]

Lomax also noted that "Rising Sun" was the name of a bawdy house in two traditional English songs, and a name for English pubs,[8] and proposed that the location of the house was then relocated from England to the US by White Southern performers.[8] In 1953, Lomax met Harry Cox, an English farm labourer known for his impressive folk song repertoire, who knew a song called "She was a Rum One" (Roud 2128) with two possible opening verses, one beginning

"If you go to Lowestoft, and ask for The Rising Sun, There you'll find two old whores and my old woman is one."[9]

The recording Lomax made of Harry Cox is available online.[10] (Cox provides the alternate opening verse with the "Rising Sun" line at 1:40 in the recording.) It is considered extremely unlikely that Cox was aware of the American song.[11] It is also lent credence by the fact that there was a pub in Lowestoft called The Rising Sun and by the fact that the town is the most easterly settlement in the UK (hence "rising sun").[12] However, doubt has been expressed as to whether Cox's song has any connection to later versions.[12][13]

Meanwhile, folklorist Vance Randolph proposed an alternative French origin, the "rising sun" referring to the decorative use of the sunburst insignia dating to the time of Louis XIV, which was brought to North America by French immigrants.[7]

"House of Rising Sun" was said to have been known by American miners in 1905.[5] The oldest published version of the lyrics is that printed by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1925, in a column titled "Old Songs That Men Have Sung" in Adventure magazine.[14] The lyrics of that version begin:[14][15]

There is a house in New Orleans, it's called the Rising Sun
It's been the ruin of many poor girl
Great God, and I for one.

The oldest known recording of the song, under the title "Rising Sun Blues", is by Appalachian artists Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster, who recorded it on September 6, 1933, on the Vocalion label (02576).[5][16] Ashley said he had learned it from his grandfather, Enoch Ashley,[17] who got married around the time of the Civil War,[18] which suggests that the song could have been written years before the turn of the century. Roy Acuff, an "early-day friend and apprentice" of Clarence Ashley's, learned it from him and recorded it as "Rising Sun" on November 3, 1938.[5][16]

The narrative of the lyrics has varied between male and female narrators. The earliest known printed version from Gordon's column is about a woman's warning. The earliest known recording of the song by Ashley is about a rounder, a male character. The lyrics of that version begin:[19]

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
Where many poor boys to destruction has gone
And me, oh God, are one.

On an expedition with his wife to eastern Kentucky, the folklorist Alan Lomax set up his recording equipment in Middlesboro, in the house of the singer and activist Tillman Cadle (husband of Mary Elizabeth Barnicle). There, he recorded a performance by Georgia Turner, the 16-year-old daughter of a local miner. He called it "The Rising Sun Blues".[16] Lomax recorded two other different versions in Eastern Kentucky in 1937, both of which can be heard online: one sung by Dawson Henson[20] and another by Bert Martin.[21] In his 1941 songbook Our Singing Country, Lomax credits the song to Georgia Turner, using Martin's extra lyrics to "complete" the song.[16][22] The Kentucky folk singer Jean Ritchie sang a different traditional version of the song to Lomax in 1949, which can be heard online courtesy of the Alan Lomax archive.[23] Dillard Chandler of Madison County, North Carolina sang a variant of the song beginning "There was a sport in New Orleans".[24]

Several older blues recordings of songs with similar titles are unrelated, for example, "Rising Sun Blues" by Ivy Smith (1927), but Bluesologist for Texas music Coy Prather has argued that "The Risin' Sun" by Texas Alexander (1928) is an early blues version of the hillbilly song.[25]

Ted Anthony in his research on the song noted a lyrical similarity to versions of an old tune called The Rambling Cowboy. [26]

In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a version. Keynote Records released one by Josh White in 1942,[27] and Decca Records released one also in 1942 with music by White and the vocals performed by Libby Holman.[28] Holman and White also collaborated on a 1950 release by Mercury Records. White is also credited with having written new words and music that have subsequently been popularized in the versions made by many other later artists. White learned the song from a "white hillbilly singer", who might have been Ashley, in North Carolina in 1923–1924.[5] Lead Belly recorded two versions of the song, in February 1944 and in October 1948, called "In New Orleans" and "The House of the Rising Sun", respectively; the latter was recorded in sessions that were later used on the album Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1953, Smithsonian Folkways).

In 1957, Glenn Yarbrough recorded the song for Elektra Records. The song is also credited to Ronnie Gilbert on an album by the Weavers released in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Pete Seeger released a version on Folkways Records in 1958, which was re-released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2009.[16] Andy Griffith recorded the song on his 1959 album Andy Griffith Shouts the Blues and Old Timey Songs. In 1960, Miriam Makeba recorded the song on her eponymous RCA album.

Joan Baez recorded it in 1960 on her self-titled debut album; she frequently performed the song in concert throughout her career. Nina Simone recorded her first version for the live album Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. Simone later covered the song again on her 1967 studio album Nina Simone Sings the Blues. Tim Hardin sang it on This is Tim Hardin, recorded in 1964 but not released until 1967.[29] The Chambers Brothers recorded a version on Feelin' the Blues, released on Vault Records (1970).

In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his debut album, released in March 1962. That release had no songwriting credit, but the liner notes indicate that Dylan learned this version of the song from Dave Van Ronk. In an interview for the documentary No Direction Home, Van Ronk said that he was intending to record the song and that Dylan copied his version. Van Ronk recorded it soon thereafter for the album Just Dave Van Ronk.

I had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. I put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps—a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers. By the early 1960s, the song had become one of my signature pieces, and I could hardly get off the stage without doing it.

Then, one evening in 1962, I was sitting at my usual table in the back of the Kettle of Fish, and Dylan came slouching in. He had been up at the Columbia studios with John Hammond, doing his first album. He was being very mysterioso about the whole thing, and nobody I knew had been to any of the sessions except Suze, his lady. I pumped him for information, but he was vague. Everything was going fine and, "Hey, would it be okay for me to record your arrangement of 'House of the Rising Sun?'" Oh, shit. "Jeez, Bobby, I'm going into the studio to do that myself in a few weeks. Can't it wait until your next album?" A long pause. "Uh-oh". I did not like the sound of that. "What exactly do you mean, 'Uh-oh'?" "Well", he said sheepishly, "I've already recorded it".[30]

The song was recorded in just one take on May 18, 1964,[36][37] and it starts with a now-famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio by Hilton Valentine.[1][3] According to Valentine, he simply took Dylan's chord sequence and played it as an arpeggio.[38] The performance takes off with Burdon's lead vocal, which has been variously described as "howling",[2] "soulful",[39] and as "...deep and gravelly as the north-east English coal town of Newcastle that spawned him".[1] Finally, Alan Price's pulsating organ part (played on a Vox Continental) completes the sound. Burdon later said, "We were looking for a song that would grab people's attention".[40]

As recorded, "The House of the Rising Sun" ran four and a half minutes, regarded as far too long for a pop single at the time.[36] Producer Most, who initially did not really want to record the song at all,[38] said that on this occasion: "Everything was in the right place ... It only took 15 minutes to make so I can't take much credit for the production".[41] He was nonetheless now a believer and declared it a single at its full length, saying "We're in a microgroove world now, we will release it".[41]

In the US, however, the original single (MGM 13264) was a 2:58 version. The MGM Golden Circle reissue (KGC 179) featured the unedited 4:29 version, although the record label gives the edited playing time of 2:58. The edited version was included on the group's 1964 US debut album The Animals, while the full version was later included on their best-selling 1966 US greatest hits album, The Best of the Animals. However, the very first American release of the full-length version was on a 1965 album of various groups entitled Mickie Most Presents British Go-Go (MGM SE-4306), the cover of which, under the listing of "House of the Rising Sun", described it as the "Original uncut version". Americans could also hear the complete version in the movie Go Go Mania in the spring of 1965.

Cash Box described the US single version as "a haunting, beat-ballad updating of the famed folk-blues opus that the group's lead delivers in telling solo vocal fashion."[42]

"House of the Rising Sun" was not included on any of the group's British albums, but it was reissued as a single twice in subsequent decades, charting both times, reaching number 25 in 1972 and number 11 in 1982.

The Animals version was played in 6/8 meter, unlike the 4/4 of most earlier versions. Arranging credit went only to Alan Price. According to Burdon, this was simply because there was insufficient room to name all five band members on the record label, and Alan Price's first name was first alphabetically. However, this meant that only Price received songwriter's royalties for the hit, a fact that has caused bitterness among the other band members ever since.[3][43]

• Eric Burdon – vocals
• Hilton Valentine – electric guitar
• Chas Chandler – bass guitar
• Alan Price – Vox Continental organ
• John Steel – drums and percussion

"House of the Rising Sun" was a trans-Atlantic hit: after reaching the top of the UK pop singles chart in July 1964, it topped the US pop singles chart two months later, on September 5, 1964, where it stayed for three weeks. Many cite this as the first true classic rock song,[44] and became the first British Invasion number one unconnected with the Beatles.[45] It was the group's breakthrough hit in both countries and became their signature song.[46] The song was also a hit in Ireland twice, peaking at No. 10 upon its initial release in 1964 and later reaching a brand new peak of No. 5 when reissued in 1982.

According to John Steel, Bob Dylan told him that when he first heard the Animals' version on his car radio, he stopped to listen, "jumped out of his car" and "banged on the bonnet" (the hood of the car), inspiring him to go electric.[47] Dave Van Ronk said that the Animals' version—like Dylan's version before it—was based on his arrangement of the song.[48]

Dave Marsh described the Animals' take on "The House of the Rising Sun" as "the first folk-rock hit", sounding "as if they'd connected the ancient tune to a live wire".[2] Writer Ralph McLean of the BBC agreed that it was "arguably the first folk rock tune" and "a revolutionary single", after which "the face of modern music was changed forever."[3]

The Animals' rendition of the song is recognized as one of the classics of British pop music. Writer Lester Bangs labeled it "a brilliant rearrangement" and "a new standard rendition of an old standard composition".[49] It ranked number 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". It is also one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". The RIAA ranked it number 240 on their list of "Songs of the Century". In 1999 it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. It has long since become a staple of oldies and classic rock radio formats. A 2005 Channel 5 poll ranked it as Britain's fourth-favorite number one song.[36]

The song was covered in French by Johnny Hallyday. His version (titled "Le Pénitencier", pronounced [lə penitɑ̃sje]) was released in October 1964 and spent one week at number one on the singles sales chart in France (from October 17 to 23).[102] In Wallonia, Belgium, his single spent 28 weeks on the chart, also peaking at number one.[103]

He performed the song during his 2014 US tour.

Colombian band Los Speakers covered the song under the title "La Casa del Sol Naciente", in their 1965 album of the same name.

Two notable German covers/adaptions were created, one by Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung, which in 1989 recorded a song with lyrics telling the story of an East Germany citizen fleeing East Berlin after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and his following disillusion with Western society.[105] Another one that gained international recognition was created for the soundtrack of Wolfenstein: The New Order in 2014, interpreting the song with Volksmusik instrumentation, fitting the alternate future theme of the game in which Nazi Germany won World War II, as part of a collection of 'adapted' pop hits.[106][107]

Famous Yugoslav singer Miodrag "Miki" Jevremović covered the song and included it in his 1964 EP "18 Žutih Ruža" (eng. "Eighteen Yellow Roses")