Posted on 02/10/2024 9:13:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
Tom Clarence Ashley & Gwen Foster: House Of The Rising Sun (1933)
leadbelly - house of the rising sun
The House of the Rising Sun trough History (1933-2016)
Why would a gambler need a suitcase and a trunk? Shouldn't one or another suffice?
Rumour has it this song was about a house where terrible things took place. Ritual killings and such.
I always thought the House of the Rising Sun was the Orleans Parish Prison.
Or at least that’s what I thought every time I drove by the Orleans Parish Prison,
“And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I’m one”
That one line, playing in my head, kept me out of lots of trouble in New Orleans.
I’ve heard the chord procession we’re familiar with since back in the early sixties was from Dave Van Ronk. Dylan got it from Van Rink and the Animals from Dylan.
Bob Dillon’s rendition was about boys going to a bordello.
Dylan, not Dillon. My mistake.
That’s definitely a nicer interpretation.
The animals apparently brought it over from England and reworked the lyrics for the American audience.
It’s about a brothel.
Good info...thanks.
I loved that song by the Animals first time I heard it. Became obsessed to learn it on the guitar for a girl I knew.
To get it right, I practiced it so much that I had blood on my strings and fret board. Didn’t get the girl. She ended up getting married 7 times! Glad I escaped that one with just the song. Still love it too!
Nina Simone does a great job on the song.
There is a group of YouTubes where young people hear some of these songs (supposedly) for the first time. Their reaction the House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and Unchained Melody by Bobby Hatfield are priceless.
I can remember Joan Baez singing it at Club 47 before we’d ever heard of Dylan. We folkie schoolkids of course learned it right away.
Internet says she recorded it in 1960.
The Animals butchered it. I’d shut the radio off if a DJ had the temerity to play it.
Where does an “Ethnomusicologist” find a job?
I have a copy of "Rising Sun Blues". The sound quality is pretty bad. Sounds pretty much like he was "singing into a can". I keep it in my playlist because it is a bit of musical history that most folk don't know.
I seem to recall reading many years ago that it was an opium den.
O2
It’s written as a woman’s song.
Animals changed the words.
Woody Guthrie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX_bEDqxHFw
Lyrics are from the perspective of a woman.
It was a woman’s song, lamenting her life, telling her baby sister not to do like she has done.
Club 47!
My cousin’s aunt and uncle ran its successor, Passim for decades at 47 Palmer Street, Harvard Square. Good great times, those were.
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